And you thought the Black Death was a plague of the past. Not so, at least for North American Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs (paywall):
Though the plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis
, now rarely infects people in North America, it’s been responsible for the deaths of many black-tailed prairie dogs. This is a problem for the grasslands, where many other species rely on prairie dogs to survive. Predators eat them, animals make homes in their burrows and grass growth is shaped by them (Conservation Biology, doi.org/3cj).
(NewScientist 11 April 2015)
