Warmer, More Crowded Cities Bring Out the Rats
upstart writes:
Warmer, More Crowded Cities Bring Out the Rats:
Jonathan Richardson was long bothered by hyperbolic headlines proclaiming the rat problem in so-and-so city was out of control. City dwellers do have cause for concern-the animals bring both disease and distress-but the urban ecologist at the University of Richmond balked at claims saying one city had it worse than another. "There were not a lot of data," he says. Yet having real numbers on rodent infestations is critical for determining whether control measures are working. So, he and colleagues embarked on a global study of how rat populations in major cities have changed over time.
Climate change emerged as a driving factor behind urban rat swarms, the researchers report today in Science Advances. As temperatures rise, they conclude, and people flock to urban areas and convert formerly "green" spaces into neighborhoods and shopping centers, they created a perfect storm for rat populations to explode. And the city that's fared the worst over the past decade? Washington, D.C.
[...] Smart, cooperative, and resilient, rats have coevolved with humans for millennia and have fine-tuned their ability to take advantage of garbage, debris piles, sewers, and small postage stamp-size plots of soil along sidewalks for food and nesting. The animals can transmit disease, spoil food and animal feed supplies-costing the United States $27 billion per year-and cause mental anguish in city dwellers. "Like the proverbial 'canary in the mine' our 'rats in the city' provide an indication of human welfare," Bartal says.
To learn more about this threat, Richardson and colleagues reached out to city governments around the U.S. to collect data on rat populations, as well as average temperature, human population, and property development trends. And because so few places keep or share rat data, they expanded the study to cities outside the U.S. and eventually ended up with 16 where there were inspection, trapping, and rat sighting records across an average of 12 years that had been compiled by these municipalities.
"It is a lot of work to build these databases," says Miriam Maas, who studies animal-borne infectious at the Centre for Infectious Disease Control and was not involved with the work. "[But] when done on 16 cities, it is possible to see trends."
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