SCSA Biology Infectious disease

Horses do not typically eat fruit as a primary food source. The virus is transmitted through bat bodily fluids, which are more likely to contaminate exposed feed and water rather than just fruit.

Capturing and vaccinating an entire wild population of fruit bats is logistically impossible and therefore not a practical solution.

Destroying the food source of fruit bats would cause severe ecological damage and could actually force bats to relocate closer to human and horse populations in search of food.

While Phytophthora is a major threat to many Australian native plants, it is not restricted to them and infects plants worldwide.

Phytophthora is a plant pathogen (a type of water mold) and does not infect animals.

Phytophthora specifically targets and infects plants, not animals.

Floods often leave behind pools of stagnant water as they recede, creating ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes and potentially increasing malaria transmission.

Global air travel facilitates the spread of malaria to new regions or its reintroduction to areas where it was previously eradicated, increasing transmission.

A warm climate accelerates both the mosquito life cycle and the development of the malaria parasite within the mosquito, which increases transmission rates.

While temperature can influence viral replication rates within the host, climate change primarily alters the disease's distribution by impacting the vector's life cycle and habitat, rather than the virus itself.

Ross River virus is a viral pathogen, not a bacterial one, making this option factually incorrect.

Although human behavior may shift with climate, the primary driver of the virus's changing geographic distribution is the environmental impact on its mosquito vector, not human reproduction or activity.

Incorrect. While many pathogens have small genomes, genome size does not dictate the speed of evolution. Rapid evolution is primarily driven by how quickly an organism reproduces.

Incorrect. Pathogens typically have smaller genomes, not larger ones. Furthermore, a large genome does not cause rapid evolution and might actually slow down replication.

Incorrect. Long generation times would actually slow down the evolutionary process, as it takes much longer for new traits to be passed on to subsequent generations.

Biosecurity measures prevent the introduction or spread of a pathogen to a new geographical area, rather than directly disrupting its biological life cycle.

Tetanus bacteria live in soil and do not require a human host to complete their life cycle. Immunisation protects the host from toxins but does not disrupt the pathogen's life cycle.

Restricting access prevents the physical spread of the pathogen by human movement, but it does not interrupt the biological stages of the pathogen's life cycle.

This order incorrectly starts with isolating the microorganism before first establishing its presence in diseased animals and absence in healthy ones.

This sequence is incorrect because it suggests isolating the microorganism before confirming it is exclusively found in diseased animals.

This order is incorrect because it places the re-isolation of the microorganism from the experimental animal before actually infecting the healthy experimental animal.

Incorrect. While zoonotic diseases involve pathogens that infect animals, the defining characteristic is the cross-species transmission to humans, not just the pathogen's origin.

Incorrect. Although some zoonotic diseases are transmitted by mosquitoes, this specifically describes vector-borne transmission. Zoonoses can spread through many other routes, such as direct contact or contaminated food.

Incorrect. Zoonotic diseases specifically involve transmission between animals and humans, not between animals and plants.

This is incorrect because viruses lack ribosomes and other cellular machinery, requiring them to hijack a host cell to synthesize proteins.

This is incorrect because viruses are acellular and do not have cell walls, which are structures typically found in bacteria, plants, and fungi.

This is incorrect because viruses lack both cell walls and ribosomes, as they are not true cells and rely entirely on host organisms for reproduction.

Malaria is transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes, not Aedes mosquitoes, which are known for transmitting diseases like dengue and Zika.

While malaria can be fatal to humans, it does not typically kill the mosquito host, as the Plasmodium parasite relies on the mosquito to complete its life cycle and spread.

The malaria pathogen infects the salivary glands of the mosquito, not the human. In humans, the infection targets the liver and blood.

Relenza works by inhibiting neuraminidase to prevent viral release, but since MERS lacks this protein, the drug would not affect the release of MERS viral particles.

Because MERS does not have the neuraminidase protein that Relenza targets, the drug would be completely ineffective as a preventative measure.

Relenza is highly specific to neuraminidase and does not target or bind to other cell surface proteins on infected cells.