Condors
Investigating mechanisms of resilience in one of North America's most endangered birds
Hard-won, and fragile
The California condor nearly vanished from the globe in the 1980s. After decades of dedicated recovery work, the population has climbed back from just 27 individuals in 1987 to over 500 birds today. But two converging threats now shadow that hard-won progress: chronic lead poisoning from spent ammunition in the carcasses condors scavenge, and the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), which killed nearly a fifth of Arizona's condor flock in a single three-week outbreak. For a species with so few individuals, each death is a critical loss.
Reading resilience at the molecular level
In collaboration with researchers from federal, not-for-profit, academic, and private agencies, Cara works to investigate how condors respond to and, in some cases, withstand these stressors. By examining regulatory mechanisms of stress in condors exposed to lead and those challenged by avian influenza, this research aims to identify the biological mechanisms that determine whether an individual survives or succumbs.
Avian influenza kills quickly and unpredictably. The question of why some condors seem to tolerate exposures that would be rapidly fatal in others remains unknown. Lead is a neurotoxin and immune disruptor, and these stressors could in fact be working in tandem. Answering this requires looking at the cascade of molecular responses that kick in under toxic stress. Similarly, understanding which immune signals differentiate survivors from non-survivors could inform both conservation management and our broader understanding of viral resilience in birds and mammals.
Why this goes beyond the California condor?
The condor is a sentinel species, a canary in the coal mine, for the health of the ecosystems it inhabits. But the condor is also a window into biology we don't yet fully understand. The mechanisms by which any animal mounts an immune response to a novel pathogen, or detoxifies a heavy metal before it reaches critical organs, are not unique to condors. They are versions of systems that exist across vertebrate life, including in humans.
What we learn from the condor about stressor tolerance may ultimately inform our understanding of exposure in human populations. What we learn about avian influenza resilience has direct relevance to pandemic preparedness, a world aware that the next human pandemic could begin in birds.