Kristi L. West's research while affiliated with University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and other places

... In addition to morbillivirus, an alpha herpesvirus was present in the Longman's beaked whale and Brucella ceti in the neonate sperm whale (West et al., 2013;West et al., 2015). Disseminated toxoplasmosis was diagnosed in an adult male spinner dolphin (Landrau-Giovannetti et al., 2022). A presumed healthy pelagic false killer whale in robust body condition that was by-caught outside of the Exclusive Economic Zone off Hawai'i tested positive for BWCV, but did not show signs of systemic disease. ...

... Co-infections were present among some of the BWCV positive individuals ( Table 2). The initial Longman's beaked whale, a sperm whale, a Blainville's beaked whale, and a Fraser's dolphin were co-infected with cetacean morbillivirus (West et al., 2013;West et al., 2015;Jacob et al., 2016;West et al., 2021). In addition to morbillivirus, an alpha herpesvirus was present in the Longman's beaked whale and Brucella ceti in the neonate sperm whale (West et al., 2013;West et al., 2015). ...

... The use of unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAV; i.e., drones) is fast advancing the study of cetacean biology (e.g., Durban et al. 2016;Dawson et al. 2017;Leslie et al. 2020;Sprogis et al. 2020;Azizeh et al. 2021;Currie et al. 2021;Ramos et al. 2022). Drones have been used to identify individuals (Hartman et al. 2020;Ramos et al. 2021), to assess cetacean body condition (Christiansen et al. 2016(Christiansen et al. , 2018(Christiansen et al. , 2020bDurban et al. 2021;Johnston et al. 2022), to sample their microbiome or hormones (Apprill et al. 2017;Atkinson et al. 2021), and to remotely measure cetacean physiological parameters (Horton et al. 2019;Martins et al. 2020;Lonati et al. 2022). ...

... Cetaceans in Hawaiian waters overlap with a number of anthropogenic activities that have the potential to result in both indirect and direct harmful population-level consequences. Threats include military operations (e.g., Martin et al., 2015;Henderson et al., 2019;Baird et al., 2021a;Durbach et al., 2021), commercial and recreational fishing (e.g., Baird and Webster, 2020;Baird et al., 2021b), tourism (e.g., Currie et al., 2021), shipping (e.g., Lammers et al., 2013), pollutants (e.g., Ylitalo et al., 2009;Bachman et al., 2014;Kratofil et al., 2020), protozoal disease from feral, non-native cats (Migaki et al., 1990;Landrau-Giovannetti et al., 2022), and marine debris (Currie et al., 2017). The range-resident behavior of many Hawaiian cetaceans (Baird, 2016) may further exacerbate risk from these threats; where site fidelity may have once been evolutionarily advantageous, this mechanism may become maladaptive in the Anthropocene (Merkle et al., 2022). ...

... New viral species are recognized when nucleotide similarity to existing species falls below 80% (Breitbart et al., 2017) and in recent years many novel species and strains of circoviruses have been discovered, although their pathological significance can be difficult to discern. Many of these new circoviruses have been found in mammals, with recently discovered novel species being present in pandas, elk, wolverines, bats, and the first marine mammal (Fisher et al., 2020;Landrau-Giovannetti et al., 2020;Lecis et al., 2020;Bandoo et al., 2021;Dai et al., 2021). Additionally, novel avian strains have been discovered within species of duck and penguin, the latter of which was connected to a feather-loss disorder, demonstrating that pathogenicity is present in these emergent viruses (Morandini et al., 2019;Levy et al., 2020;Wang et al., 2021). ...

... 2−6 Although a variety of regulatory actions have resulted in a substantial reduction in the emissions of PFAS, these chemicals, containing the most stable carbon−fluorine (C−F) bond, are quite recalcitrant to degradation under environmental conditions, resulting in accumulation and biomagnification in the food chain and potential toxicological effects on cetaceans, as apex predators. 4,7 Despite cetaceans being considered one of the most PFAS-polluted species, there are substantial information gaps about PFAS toxicity and health risks. Specifically, to date, investigating the possible health effects of PFAS in nearshore dolphins remains poorly less understood. ...

... For rough-toothed dolphins and short-finned pilot whales, diel patterns across all sites (i.e., less acoustic activity during daylight) match with previous studies of these species in Hawai'i (Owen et al., 2019;Shaff & Baird, 2021;Simonis, 2018). Increased acoustic activity during the night was also observed for the bottlenose dolphin and melon-headed whale class, which matches with existing knowledge of melon-headed whale behavior West et al., 2018). Bottlenose dolphins, in contrast, have been known to forage during both day and nighttime periods (Baird, 2016). ...

... A number of existing pangolin rescue centers in countries within their range, including China [14], India [15], Singapore [16], Vietnam [17] and South Africa [18], rescue and rehabilitate confiscated pangolins prior to their release back to the wild. Normal physiological characteristics and common health concerns have rarely been studied in pangolins compared to many other well-known wild animals [19][20][21][22], resulting in challenges for rehabilitation centers and conservation breeding programs in the pangolin range. ...

... For all cetacean species studied to date, Mb levels are initially low at birth, and the neonates of most species have less than a quarter of adult Mb levels (Table S2). Unfortunately, small sample sizes combined with a lack of lifehistory knowledge limits us to only use three of these species [harbor porpoises (Phocoeana phocoena), bottlenose dolphins and beluga whales] to explore how Mb maturation varies in relation to weaning age in cetaceans (see table 3 in Noren and West, 2017). Of these three species, Mb maturation varies in accordance with weaning age in only two; Mb matures at 0.75-0.83 ...

... Stranded porpoises in Sweden are screened routinely for cetacean morbilliviruses, which can be neurotropic in cetaceans, and IAV, which can be neurotropic in other species (4,6). We analyzed pooled lung, spleen, and brain samples for cetacean morbilliviruses by using real-time reverse transcription PCR (6) with the addition of an in-house designed hydrolysis probe (6FAM-TGG TTC CAA CAG GYA G-MGB) for detection. ...