Palmyra Atoll

New research reveals the removal of rodents from Palmyra by Island Conservation, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2011 also got rid of the disease-carrying Asian tiger mosquito. By: Jan TenBruggencate. Sometimes — too rarely — happy things happen by accident.

The common black rat (Rattus rattus) is a large tree-dwelling rodent whose blood fed many Asian tiger mosquitoes on Palmyra Atoll. Source: UC Santa Barbara. The Asian tiger mosquito — carrier of such diseases as dengue, yellow fever, Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya and Zika — appears to have ...

What changed? In 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy and Island Conservation began a multi-year campaign to systematically eradicate all of Palmyra Atoll's 40,000 rats, an invasive species and the island's only year-round mammal inhabitants. But the mosquitoes, in theory, ...

Invasive species damage ecosystems, economies, agriculture, and human health. You can apply these simple recommendations to help stop the dispersal of invasive species. 1. Care for your pets. Many invasive species have been traced back to releases of pets into the wild. Only adopt a pet if you are ...

Like most islands visited by humans over the past few hundred years, Palmyra Atoll was once home to tens of thousands of introduced rats. But an intensive campaign by biologists from the Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has rendered the island rat-free.

Palmyra AtollKEVIN LAFFERTYOne thousand miles south of Hawaii, the Palmyra Atoll, a horseshoe-shaped chain of islets, is about as isolated as you can imagine, says Erin Mordecai, a biologist at Stanford University who has visited the islets to conduct ecology research. “It's really, really remote and has ...

A drone's-eye view of Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge; 2. ... “Hidden Pacific” documents the Palmyra Atoll, 1,200 miles southwest of Honolulu; the Wake Atoll, 2,000 miles southeast of Japan; and the Rose Atoll, 185 miles east of American ... Wreckage of a World War II aircraft on Palmyra Atoll; 8.

With its lush rainforest and deep turquoise waters surrounded by some of the most intact coral reef ecosystems in the world, Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge seems like a perfect island paradise, but it wasn't always so perfect. In 2011, the tiny atoll 1,000 miles from Hawai'i was overrun with more than ...

One of these coral reefs is at Palmyra Atoll, an island south of Hawaii. Every year, scientists go back to the island armed with underwater cameras and scuba diving gear. They take thousands of photos of the corals, covering an area of more than 17,000 square feet. In the lab, the photos are then stitched ...

Scientists are excited about the ramifications after removal of rodents from Palmyra also got rid of the disease-carrying Asian tiger mosquito. By Jan TenBruggencate / March 14, 2018. Sometimes — too rarely — happy things happen by accident. On the remote island of Palmyra, directly south of Hawaii, the removal of rats ...