Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) populations in the wild are in sharp decline in Australia due to deforestation, road accidents, dog attacks, and disease from infection with sexually transmitted Chlamydia spp. Severely diseased koalas that are captured are euthanized for humane reasons because antibiotics are not effective. Paradoxically, we propose that euthanizing more koalas could help to increase koala population numbers. We investigated the potential impact of systematically euthanizing diseased koalas. Using data from a well-studied koala population, and an individual-based computer simulation model, we predict that such a program would result in a larger population of koalas after 7 yr than would exist without the program. If terminally diseased and sterile koalas are euthanized and other infected captured koalas are given antibiotics, chlamydial infection could be eliminated and population growth observed after 4 yr. The practical implementation of such a program would be facilitated with further development of tools to diagnose infection and internal disease in the field.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 179. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 21 August 2025.
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#282,447
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Outputs from Journal of Wildlife Diseases
#8
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#2,612
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Outputs of similar age from Journal of Wildlife Diseases
#1
of 17 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,404,538 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,509 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.8. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 17 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
