A highly fatal and contagious disease affecting rabbits has the potential to cause severe cascading effects on the ecosystem, Nevada wildlife officials say. Rabbit hemorrhagic disease, specifically a strain known as RHDV2, affects wild and domestic rabbits and related hares and pikas. (Popular Science notes that rabbit hemorrhagic disease comes from the calicivirus family, which is unrelated to Ebola.) LaHue said rabbit populations are down, though it’s hard to tease apart effects of rabbit hemorrhagic disease and drought. “So when you have drought combined with the rabbit hemorrhagic disease, that really impacts what offspring those birds are able to produce.