An associate vice-president at Carleton has been given a grant to research the outbreak of avian cholera that killed thousands of eider ducks in 2004.
It is estimated that as many 3,000 ducks died over a span of two to three weeks, according to associate vice-president Mark Forbes.
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) awarded the $500,000 grant over three years to a team of researchers led by Forbes and Grant Gilchrist, a research scientist at Environment Canada, according to a press release.
The team includes researchers from across Canada and Norway, it said.
Gilchrist, who has been studying eider ducks in the Arctic since 1996, said avian cholera has affected birds since the 1940s, but only hit the eider ducks in 2004.
Gilchrist said part of the study will involve collaborating with governments in Greenland and Denmark, where the eider ducks migrate to.
One of the mysteries of the disease is that not every duck is susceptible.
“Some individuals survive while others don’t,” Gilchrist said.
Researcher Oliver Love of the University of Windsor said his focus would be on determining what makes certain individual birds susceptible to avian cholera.
“The first challenge is if we’ll have any birds to work on,” Love said.
Half of the colony of eider ducks died in 2006, he said.