Alynn M. Martin-Allen

Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute · Rangeland And Wildlife Sciences at Texas A&M Kingsville

Emerging and invasive pathogens can have long‐lasting impacts on susceptible wildlife populations, including localized collapse and extirpation. Management of threatening disease is of widespread interest and requires knowledge of spatiotemporal patterns of pathogen spread. Theory suggests disease spread often occurs via two patterns: homogenous mi...

Island populations can represent genetically distinct and evolutionarily important lineages relative to mainland conspecifics. However, phenotypic divergence of island populations does not necessarily reflect genetic divergence, particularly for lineages inhabiting islands periodically connected during Pleistocene low sea stands. Marine barriers ma...

Long‐term pathogen control or eradication in wildlife is rare and represents a major challenge in conservation. Control is particularly difficult for environmentally transmitted pathogens, including some of the most conservation‐critical wildlife diseases. We undertook a treatment programme aimed at population‐scale eradication of the environmental...

Secondary sexual traits (e.g., horns and antlers) have ecological and evolutionary importance and are of management interest for game species. Yet, how these traits respond to emerging threats like infectious disease remains underexplored. Infectious pneumonia threatens bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) populations across North America and we hypothe...

Human Lyme disease-primarily caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto (s.s.) in North America-is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States. Research on risk mitigation strategies during the last three decades has emphasized methods to reduce densities of the primary vector in eastern North America, the blacklegged...

The bare-nosed wombat is an iconic Australian fauna with remarkable biological characteristics and mythology. This solitary, muscular, fossorial, herbivorous marsupial from southeast Australia has continent and continental island subspeciation. Vombatiformes also contains hairy-nosed wombats ( Lasiorhinus spp.); koala ( Phascolarctos cinereus); and...

Understanding the spatial dynamics and drivers of wildlife pathogens is constrained by sampling logistics, with implications for advancing the field of landscape epidemiology and targeted allocation of management resources. However, visually apparent wildlife diseases, when combined with remote‐surveillance and distribution modelling technologies,...

The tricolored bat (Perimyotis subflavus) has experienced extensive declines in regional abundance — near 30% as of 2013 — due to disease, habitat loss, and anthropogenic conflict. There is urgency to determine whether the species should be protected in the United States; however, critical species-specific information required to make this decision...

Resource competition is an important interaction that can structure ecological communities, but is difficult to demonstrate in nature, and rarely demonstrated for large mammals including marsupials. We analysed 10 years of population survey data to investigate resource competition between bare-nosed wombats (Vombatus ursinus) and eastern grey kanga...

Background: Sarcoptic mange causes significant animal welfare and occasional conservation concerns for bare-nosed wombats (Vombatus ursinus) throughout their range. To date, in situ chemotherapeutic interventions have involved macrocytic lactones, but their short duration of action and need for frequent re-administration has limited treatment succe...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Abstract Genetic composition can influence host susceptibility to, and transmission of, pathogens, with potential population‐level consequences. In bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), pneumonia epidemics caused by Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae have been associated with severe population declines and limited recovery across North America. Adult survivors ei...

The bare-nosed wombat (Vombatus ursinus) is a fossorial, herbivorous, Australian marsupial, renowned for its cubic feces. However, the ability of the wombat's soft intestine to sculpt flat faces and sharp corners in feces is poorly understood. In this combined experimental and numerical study, we show one mechanism for the formation of corners in a...

Background Sarcoptic mange causes significant animal welfare and occasional conservation concerns for bare-nosed wombats ( Vombatus ursinus ) throughout their range. To date, in situ chemotherapeutic interventions have involved macrocytic lactones, but their short duration of action and need for frequent re-administration has limited treatment succ...

The northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii) is an iconic marsupial endemic to Australia, recognised globally for its status as the largest, herbivorous burrowing mammal. Owing to historical challenges, including anthropogenic conflict and environmental threats, the species was pushed to near extinction and was officially classified as Cr...

Environmental exposure to Sarcoptes scabiei mites in burrows is considered the dominant mechanism of sarcoptic mange transmission among wombats. We document elevated activity of bare-nosed wombats at a burrow with subterranean water access relative to burrows without this resource, suggesting that some burrows may contribute more to mange transmiss...

The invasive ectoparasite Sarcoptes scabiei affects the welfare and conservation of Australian marsupials. Molecular data suggest that spillover from other hosts may be responsible for the emergence of this infectious disease, but the scale of such studies is limited. We performed expanded molecular typing of the S. scabiei mitochondrial cox1 gene...

Background The globally distributed epidermal ectoparasite, Sarcoptes scabiei, is a serious health and welfare burden to at-risk human and animal populations. Rapid and sensitive detection of S. scabiei infestation is critical for intervention strategies. While direct microscopy of skin scrapings is a widely utilised diagnostic method, it has low s...

Alignment of the available S. scabiei and other arthropod ITS-2 gene sequences from GenBank

Accession numbers of the 87 ITS-2 sequences obtained from GenBank for alignment

Reproducibility of S. scabiei LAMP using skin scraping DNA extracts and mite only DNA

End-point detection of S. scabiei LAMP performed on the thermal cycle using 10-fold serial dilutions of single mite and wombat skin DNA UV visualisation of a single mite (Ss2: 2.8 ng/µL) and a S. scabiei positive wombat skin scraping (DW02_1: 86 ng/µL) LAMP amplicons on an ethidium bromide stained agarose gel. DNA serial dilution LAMP assays were p...

Results for microscopy mite count, PCR and LAMP for all samples used in this study Each sample has a corresponding host, microscopy mite count, skin scraping PCR and LAMP result. In some instances, multiple skin scrapings were taken from an individual, reflected by the sample name_body location. LF: left flank, RF: right flank, N: neck, H: head, RA...

Spiking results of negative samples to eliminate LAMP inhibition

Sarcoptic mange, caused by the parasitic mite Sarcoptes scabiei, causes a substantive burden of disease to humans, domestic animals, and wildlife, globally. There are many effects of S. scabiei infection, culminating in the disease which hosts suffer. However, major knowledge gaps remain on the pathogenic impacts of this infection. Here, we focus o...

Sarcoptic mange is a globally significant parasitic disease of humans and other animals, both domestic and wild. But clinical diagnosis of S. scabiei infestation, using the standard skin scraping followed by microscopy technique, remains highly variable (predominantly due to false-negatives), and a major challenge for human and animal welfare. Here...

Background Debilitating skin infestations caused by the mite, Sarcoptes scabiei, have a profound impact on human and animal health globally. In Australia, this impact is evident across different segments of Australian society, with a growing recognition that it can contribute to rapid declines of native Australian marsupials. Cross-host transmissio...

Due to its suspected increase in host range and subsequent global diversification, Sarcoptes scabiei has important implications at a global scale for wildlife conservation and animal and human health. The introduction of this pathogen into new locations and hosts has been shown to produce high morbidity and mortality, a situation observed recently...

Studies in molecular ecology depend on field-collected samples for genetic information, and the tissue sampled and preservation conditions strongly affect the quality of the DNA obtained. DNA yields from different tissue types have seldom been compared, and the relative performance of storage media has never been directly tested, even though these...

El “greasewood” (Sarcobatus) es un arbusto halofítico de origen norteamericano con hojas suculentas. El género consta de dos especies: Sarcobatus baileyi y Sarcobatus vermiculatus. Aunque S. vermiculatus es común en gran parte del oeste de Norteamerica, S. baileyi tiene una distribución mucho más limitada. Se pensaba anteriormente que S. baileyi er...