Wildlife Diseases - Science topic

Hi Carl

thank you for your suggestion. I am aware of these books, but I don't have access to them, unfortunately.

Javier

Dear Praneeth Silva

I invite you to see this paper.

Or accessing Zoo Taxa website : https://www.biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/article/view/zootaxa.3843.1.1

Good luck,

Please take a look at the following PDF attachment.

M. A. A. Al- Fatlawi wow this is great! I was struggling to find any papers on the subject. Do you happen to know of any more direct studies linking erythrocyte infection and peptide presentation on mHC class I in poultry or other avian systems?

Thanks for your help

Andria, If you can photograph the gapes in a controlled and standardized setting in the field, methods using photo-editing software (e.g., Adobe PhotoShop) seem promising. For example, see Kilner and Davies (1998, Nestling mouth colour: ecological correlates of a begging signal, Animal Behaviour, 56:705-712), Saino et al. (2003, Gape coloration reliably reflects immunocompetence of barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) nestlings. Behavioral Ecology 14:16-22), or Dugas and Dillow (2013, Rictal flanges of nestling birds are most colorful near the gape, Wilson Journal of Ornithology 125:430-433).

I would be interested in knowing the sources of these parasites. Is this due to disruption of habitat by humans and modern civilization? 

@Adejoke: Do you mean the weight of the microtome? I only found the lightest can cut 5 micron is about 14 kg. This is considered ok. 

@Nabil: I want to find a "portable" microtome for field pathology. Hence, IHC may not be possible.

Hi Alex,

Nice to hear from you!

I'm not totally sure what you are asking, though? If you want to work together to design a trial for the giraffe skin disease, just let me know, and we'll set you up with someone here who can help. Probably best to email me directly jkmazet@ucdavis.edu for more rapid response. Maybe you sent the question to a broad list, though.

Hope you're doing great,

Jonna

Hi,

On the African continent, there is quite a lot of literature if interested. If I may suggest a few of our publications from a theoretical and more practical perspective. Disease transmission at the wildlife-livesotck interface is our main concern in African socio-ecosystems:

Best,

AleX

I agree with Dr.Owen. However another mite Dermanyssus gallinae commonly  enter en masse into the nasopharyngeal system in dead birds. These mites might have accidentally entered behind the eyeballs.

We know surprisingly little about animal infection with many opportunistic organisms, whether protists, fungi, bacteria, or other microbes.  Many of these opportunistic pathogens are probably more common in humans than we realize, but things like Naegleria, Balamuthia, and Acanthamoeba have been noticed more in countries with robust surveillance and clinical disease reporting requirements, even though they doubtless occur in other areas, perhaps even to a greater degree.  In terms of animals, there is little doubt that opportunistic amoebae do infect them, as the tapir study cited above and other reports suggest.  Opportunistic microbes such as Legionella are also known to infect animals, but this is poorly reported and poorly read even when published.  So, your idea is a good one, but there are many things that could cause some of the conditions in elephants that you describe, so any particular etiologic agent should not be assumed.  Some serological evidence might be sought for an easy look, but the actual organism must be located and identified in diseased tissue before we can make any legitimate statement.  Good luck with your search!

I suggest you to read this document :

Well, if your goal is to simply find the most prominent cause of death, you can see it on the table you've provided. It's important to frame your scientific questions before jumping into a statistical test.

A simple chisquare test in this case is likely a goodness of fit test, where you're assuming that all COD have an equal expected probability. You will get a single p-value that tells you whether or not that's true (the answer, most assuredly based on the table, is that you will have a significant p-value, which means: The distribution of COD does not follow the expected, equal, distribution).

You would likely benefit from forming some additional questions - like the one you pose, regarding gender. You may benefit from selecting certain COD to investigate specifically (for example, are M or F orca more likely to die of cancer?). This would also likely be a goodness of fit test, where M and F have equal expected frequencies of death from cancer.

--- edit ---

I should add here, that you would need freq of cancer, and freq of other COD for each sex...

--- end---

Alternatively, you could use all of your COD vs M/F, and perform a test of independence. This would be a 2x11 contingency table. The question here is "Is gender of orca independent from COD"? If your p-value is significant it suggest that no, M and F orca have different COD. In some software packages you can follow this up with a post-hoc pairwise test (essentially repeated goodness of fit tests) to see where the differences are. Keep in mind this inflates type-I error, but most software packages will allow you to correct your p-values accordingly.

Hope that helps, best of luck!

This could be a remnant of an ectoparasite or the pathologic response to an ectoparasite bite, as Maurizio suggested.  It doesn't really resemble any avian mite or louse that I can recall seeing, but I don't generally see them after fixation for EM in skin samples.  It could also be something entirely unrelated to ectoparasites, such as a reaction to a foreign body in the skin.  Many pollen grains or algae have robust cell walls that  could provoke a cellular response if lodged in the skin.  Since these can be easily confused with parasites in fecal samples, it seems reasonable to surmise they could also get into scratches in the skin and be retained during processing. JP Caruso, PhD, Veterinary Parasitology, University of Georgia, USA, 1983

Thanks for keeping us updated! That's a pitty, but I think, that with a seriously iunjured wild animal you had not much to do.

Arquivo Brasileiro de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia

Print version ISSN 0102-0935

Arq. Bras. Med. Vet. Zootec. vol.58 no.3 Belo Horizonte June 2006

VETERINARY MEDICINE

Mulec et al 2014 reported about "Is Bat Guano a Reservoir of Geomyces destructans?".

Well, organic material such as guano could be a reservoir for the fungal growth. It is not well known or detected, that Geomyces destructans grows generally on organic material in the caves unless growth on organic material is shown in lab studies (e.g. Raudabaugh et al 2013). Nevertheless it is detected in the sediments (e.g. because spores fall down from infected bats). But, sites without droppings also have high contents of fungal growth on bats as bats do not defecate much while they hibernate. I have seen this in many sites in Germany - sites without guano have many bats carrying this fungus. We are looking at Geomyces destructans in the environment of the bats in their sites at moment...

Maybe start with this paper

"A molecular perspective: biology of the emerging pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis"

By: Rosenblum, Erica Bree; Fisher, Matthew C.; James, Timothy Y.; et al.

DISEASES OF AQUATIC ORGANISMS Volume: 92 Issue: 2-3 Pages: 131-147 Published: NOV 25 2010

What you will need:

Bunsen burner

Blunt probe

Dissecting needles

Micro Dissecting Forceps; Cross Action; Fine Tips

Micro Dissecting Forceps; Long Straight Fine Tip

Bonn Scissors 3.5" Straight 15mm Sharp/Sharp

Scalpel handle

#11 blades

Petrie dishes, disposable plastic

Stereoscopic dissecting microscope

Low melting point tissue embedding wax

Hayes saline*

*This saline was developed for use with mosquito dissection; it should work with other flies as well

Component g/l

NaCl 9.0

CaCl2 0.2

KCl 0.2

NaHCO3 0.1

Procedure:

1. Melt paraffin, pour into Petrie dish ~.5 cm deep

2. Using burner, warm probe, use probe to melt a suitable sized well in which to partially embed and mobilize your specimen (I am assuming your specimen is immobilized using CO2, a short stint in the freezer, &c.)You will probably want to orientate your specimen with ventral surface exposed to avoid having to dissect through flight muscles.

3. When your specimen is embedded, flood the dish with sufficient saline, remove the sternites, ventral thoracic plates, and other structures as needed.

4. Expose as much of the digestive system as you require (this may be from the beginning of the esophagus to the end of the rectum)

5. Using the cross action forceps, identify, isolate and snip the digestive element you have chosen (say anterior esophagus).

6. Using the direct action forceps, isolate the end portion of the digestive element you have chosen, and snip the structure

7. On removal, you have now isolated the digestive elements which you wish to further investigate.

8. With sterile forceps, you can express the contents in your culture system of choice, or onto a slide for staining &c.

9. The aseptic level you wish to maintain throughout the procedure will be dictated by your intended use of the gut contents. Lacking details in this area, I would generally suggest maintaining a level of aseptic discipline as you would in isolating any tissue from its native source with the intent of tissue culture. It is so much easier to prevent contamination than to eliminate it.

I do hope this helps; if I can provide further elucidation, le me know.

Neil Marshall, Ph.D.

It depends on what you want to amplify. The Earth Microbiome Project has good protocols for 16s metagenomics

Sandra, take a look at

Kierdorf U., Kahlke R.-D., Flohr S. (2012): Healed fracture of the tibia in a bison (Bison menneri Sher, 1997) from the late Early Pleistocene site of Untermassfeld (Thuringia, Germany). International Journal of Paleopathology, 2 (1): 19-24.  doi:10.1016/j.ijpp.2012.03.001

They cite several articles that you may find useful.

I can confirm all these advices already given. But also there is a control of generell condition also necessary, because this deasease can also be a problem of reduced immunity. Prophylactically, f. i. Vitamin C, E and Zn has to be substituted und in the case of therapy paramunity inducing drugs can be helpful.

For captive animals I would suggest following the recommendation from Kimberly. I needed to collect faecal samples for chemical analysis from hedgehogs. The hedgehogs in question were sick individuals that were being cared for by myself at my hedgehog rescue centre. The job was fairly straightforward.as each animal was housed separately and thus samples could be collected in the safe knowledge that they came from a particular animal. I have attached the paper that resulted from this work in case it might be of interest.

I agree with most of the previous comments. I tend to try to collect almost directly after deposition on the ground (our groups are followed by telemetry or domestic animals). If you want to implement a protocol to test for contamination I would suggest that 1) If possible you compare fecal material directly taken form the animal and from the same animal on the ground; 2) you regularly sample the same fecal material through time to assess if contamination increases with time; 3) you repeat sampling of the same fecal material (multiple swabs at different place of the same dung for example). This can be difficult on wild animals but you can try your protocol on domestic animals (birds, livestock, rates etc. depending what's your wild species). Hope this helps.

Best,

AleX

A couple more comments on this issue. In my opinioin, jugular venipuncture of small passerine birds is advantageous over brachial venipuncture for several reasons, including ease of the procedure without assistance, less risk of vein collapsing, and less risk of torn veins due to bird movement in the hand and therefore lower risk of hematoma and subsequent infection. I avoid sampling from the wing on small passerines but I suspect that a jumpy bird and a heavy hand could also lead to a broken wing. I also use small needles. Very small needles (e.g. 30g and 28g) can slow down the process (because of slow flow through the needle) and can also lyse cells releasing heme into the plasma, which could cause problems for some applications. 27g works best in my opinion, and is sufficiently small for jugular vein of most birds, even small ones. One important caveat. Make sure the needle of insulin syringes are designed for "subcutaneous use" (SubQ), not "intradermal use". The intradermal needles are blunt-tipped, specifically designed not to pierce a vein. I have seen hematomas produced from jugular venipuncture because the researcher was not aware of this distinction.

Hi Jose, I think the most important thing I can say is that transmission dynamics of parasites are really dependent on the system - it varies widely, and there is no over-arching generality that is universally true. However, it is generally true that the more specific the parasite is (i.e., the fewer hosts it has), the less pathogenic it tends to be. This is because when there are few alternative hosts to jump to, the parasite cannot risk killing its only host! Conversely, generalists parasite tend to evolve greater pathogenicity, because rapid transmission to any of the freely available hosts becomes more important than host survival. Also in general, transmission dynamics of parasites tend to follow phylogenetically conserved pathways in hosts. So closely related hosts are more likely to share parasites than distantly related hosts. I hope this helps!

Hi Clement, I have thought about your problem and discussed it with my Dad. He runs a pest control company and is extremely expert when it comes to wildlife management. He suggested that a robot or plumbers snake is likely to be ineffective due to the extreme depth and tortuosity of badger tunnels. Frequently the nest itself is accessed via a U-shaped tunnel, like the U-bend in a toilet, to prevent water entry, but this would impede your robot or probe just as effectively.

As I mentioned before, here in Ireland it is an offence to interfere with a badger or a sett. So he routinely installs motion sensor operated monitoring cameras to identify the presence of badgers before initiating any action on an earth or burrow. He suggested that you install such a camera at the active entrance to the sett. This is easily identified as the entrance having the highest lip, which is earth thrown up by the badger during excavation. Badgers are cleanly animals and regularly remove soiled bedding from the nest. He suggests monitoring this cleaning process via camera, allowing you to take your samples from the material the badger herself has removed. This is guaranteed to come from the nest itself. Furthermore, as a badger will clean frequently you could monitor the changes in bacteria over the entire nesting period.

Alternatively, if your legislation permits, you could affix a tracking collar, like a ferret finder, to the badger. This would allow you to identify the precise location of the nest when she sleeps in it during the day, and its depth. Hence, you could use a narrow auger to remove samples from this location (when she is not there obviously!).

I think the first idea might be best as it is least invasive, but if there is any way I can help please let me know. I think this is a fascinating problem and an opportunity to take a really novel approach.

The University of Edinburgh has a few great programs. Here is a link to the vet school.