http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Sydney's native bush rats were unintended victims of a campaign to exterminate foreign black rats during a plague epidemic in 1900, according to new research by scientists who plan to reintroduce the native rats into bushland around Sydney's harbourside suburbs. http://www.physorg.com/news176456541.html Biology Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:43:50 EST news176456541 It took less than a decade for native rats to become extinct on the Indian Ocean's previously uninhabited Christmas Island once Eurasian black rats jumped ship onto the island at the turn of the 20th century. But this story is more than the typical tale of direct competition: according to new genetic research published in PLoS One on November 5, black rats carried a pathogen that exterminated two endemic species, Rattus macleari and R. nativitatis. This study is the first to demonstrate extinction in a mammal because of disease, supporting the hypothesis proposed a decade ago that "hyperdisease conditions" -- unusually rapid mortality from which a species never recovers -can lead to extinction. http://www.physorg.com/news145088302.html Biology Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:18:22 EST news145088302