Fish and Wildlife Disease

WARC scientists are testing and developing methods for the isolation of cervid exosomes from blood samples, followed by microRNA extraction and next generation sequencing.

The U.S. Geological Survey Amphibian Research Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) is using a combination of swabbing, non-lethal tissue sampling, soil and water sampling, and collection of a variety of other environmental variables to determine the relationships between the prevalence and pathogen load of Bd infection and environmental stressors on green treefrog survival.

USGS researchers are working with partners to assess the health and foraging behavior of Florida manatees in the northern Indian River Lagoon and Banana River, areas that have experienced declining seagrasses due to an extended phytoplankton bloom.

The objectives of this study are to (1) investigate whether the immune system will respond to chemical stressors, such as new flame retardant compounds, and (2) determine if such chemical stressors influence white blood cells (WBC) responses after exposure to a viral pathogen mimicking bird flu.

A multi-agency effort assesses the health of manatees and provides baseline information on their health, reproductive status, and nutritional condition.

A severe disease - tentatively named stony coral tissue loss disease - is rapidly killing corals in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Puerto Rico, and the National Park Service are working together to better under the disease and determine if the disease affecting corals in the USVI is the same one that has been killing corals in Florida since...

In parts of Asia, wild-caught and aquaculture-reared swamp eels are widely consumed as food by humans and are a common source of human gnathostomiasis, a food-borne zoonosis caused by parasitic nematodes of the genus Gnathostoma spp. In humans, the larvae of these nematodes can cause tissue damage and, in some instances, death. Over the past two decades, many thousands of Asian swamp eels have...

Pathogens and infectious disease play a role in some recent species extinctions and are likely to impact biodiversity in the future. Environmental DNA - eDNA - is coupled with traditional amphibian sampling methods to determine the distribution and prevalence of the amphibian chytrid fungus, also known as Bd, in the southeastern US.