🚨New paper!🚨

Can we negotiate our cohabitation with rats? Karolina Lukasik spearheaded study, which suggests there might not be alternative!

Out now in a special issue of urban multispecies justice of npj Urban Sustainability: doi.org/10.1038/s42949…

A short thread: (1/9)

Suomessa on ensimmäisen kerran havaittu afrikkalaista sikaruttoa (jonka aiheuttaa ASF-virus) villisioissa. Tapausta on odotettu, ja Vaalimaa on ehkä odotetuin paikka: Venäjän puolella tätä on ja villisiat liikkuvat rajan yli.

ruokavirasto.fi/elaimet/elaint…

Ketju ASF:stä:

Kääntäen: Sikaruton torjuntaoperaatio tekee myös näkyväksi sen, kuinka paljon työtä lihateollisuuden ylläpito vaatii. Tämä ei myöskään ole varmastikaan viimeinen kerta, kun tähän ryhdytään. (11/12)

Seurauksia sikaruttotapauksesta tulee tietenkin saman tein, kun Suomi menettää sikaruttovapaan statuksen ja sian osien vienti EU:n ulkopuolelle vaikeutuu. Suomihan on pitkään panostanut elintarvikevientiin Aasiaan, joten tämä kokee kolauksen. (12/12)

So what? Difficult to say as zoonotic risks of (para)jeilongviruses are unknown, though paramyxoviruses are known to switch host species. Clinical consequences to rats? No idea.

Shortly: Method works and Helsinki rats have 13% positivity rate which is high compared to other screened pathogens.

🚨 New paper 🚨

Colleagues from @SironenTarja & Jääskeläinen lab's developed a pan-jeilong-RT-qPCR for (para)jeilongvirus detection and used it on our rats and other Finnish and Latvian wildlife!

Congrats and thanks, Emilia, for the paper!

Link: doi.org/10.1016/j.jvir…

Tutkijamme Santtu Pentikäinen kertoo rottien syksystä Viiden jälkeen -ohjelmassa

mtvuutiset.fi/videot/video/p…

Genetic characterization of rat hepatitis E virus in Helsinki rats in Archives of Virology!

Earlier we reported that we found RHEV in four of our rat carcasses (prevalence of less than 2%) and now we have complete or partial genomes for these.

doi.org/10.1007/s00705…

RHEV strains from Helsinki cluster with strains from South Korea and Spain, but polytomous trees and long branch lengths suggest lack of sampling.

Our genotype RHEV-C1 has been reported to cause mild liver dysfunction with human case reports from Hong Kong, Spain, and France.

With this invisible rat presence, we rethought urban stigmatisation and belonging as examples of multispecies societal phenomena. They are very territorial in scope, and place-making emerged as a fruitful concept to understand how multispecies urban is formed.
(3/5)

Waste, humans, rats - junk food, shopping centers, drunk people. "Well, this just happens to be a place where people randomly poop around, business as usual."

Belonging and place-making are multispecies phenomena, and urban is not only human, but more-than-human.
(4/5)

The research might be "eclectic disciplinary perspectives", but as Riikka aptly summarizes: "Urban stigmatisation and marginalisation are multispecies processes that emerge with place-making and have consequences for all the multispecies cohabitants of the city."
(5/5)