An Enigmatic Wild Passerine Mortality Event in the Eastern United States.

The ability to rapidly respond to wildlife health events is essential. However, such events are often unpredictable, especially with anthropogenic disturbances and climate-related environmental changes driving unforeseen threats. Many events also are short-lived and go undocumented, making it difficult to draw on lessons learned from past investigations.

An optimized eDNA protocol for fish tracking in estuarine environments.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is revolutionizing how we investigate biodiversity in aquatic and terrestrial environments. It is increasingly used for detecting rare and invasive species, assessing biodiversity loss and monitoring fish communities, as it is considered a cost-effective and noninvasive approach. Some environments, however, can be challenging for eDNA analyses.

Diet of the blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) during range expansion in Great Bay Estuary, New Hampshire.

Great Bay Estuary (GBE), within the rapidly warming Gulf of Maine, has experienced significant ecological shifts this century due to naturalization of invasive species. The range expansion of the American blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) currently underway from the mid-Atlantic northward brings the possibility of similar ecological shifts. This study accounts recent trapping and diet analysis of C.

Identification of an Outbreak of Bivalve Transmissible Neoplasia in Soft-Shell Clams () in the Puget Sound Using Hemolymph and eDNA Surveys.

Bivalve transmissible neoplasia (BTN) is one of three known types of naturally transmissible cancer-cancers in which the whole cancer cells move from individual to individual, spreading through natural populations. BTN is a lethal leukemia-like cancer that has been observed throughout soft-shell clam () populations on the east coast of North America, with two distinct sublineages circulating at low enzootic levels in New England, USA, and Prince Edward Island, Canada. Major cancer outbreaks likely due to BTN (MarBTN) were reported in 1980s and the 2000s and the disease has been observed since the 1970s, but it has not been observed in populations of this clam species on the US west coast.