Chlamydia psittaci in fulmars on the Faroe Islands: a causative link to South American psittacines eight decades after a severe epidemic.

A psittacosis epidemic linked to fulmar hunting occurred on the Faroe Islands in the 1930s. This study investigates a plausible explanation to the 20% human mortality in this outbreak. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Chlamydia psittaci isolated from fulmars were closely related to the highly virulent 6BC strains from psittacines and are compatible with an acquisition by fulmars of an ancestor of the 6BC clade in the 1930s.

Surveillance for Ixodes ricinus ticks (Acari, Ixodidae) on the Faroe Islands.

Ixodes ricinus ticks are expanding their geographic range in Europe, both latitudinally in Scandinavia, and altitudinally in the European Alps. This paper details the findings of both passive and active surveillance on the Faroe Islands. Active field surveillance, using tick dragging, was conducted at 38 sites across the main seven inhabited islands of the Faroes during June-August 2015.

Driving forces for changes in geographical distribution of Ixodes ricinus ticks in Europe.

Many factors are involved in determining the latitudinal and altitudinal spread of the important tick vector Ixodes ricinus (Acari: Ixodidae) in Europe, as well as in changes in the distribution within its prior endemic zones. This paper builds on published literature and unpublished expert opinion from the VBORNET network with the aim of reviewing the evidence for these changes in Europe and discusses the many climatic, ecological, landscape and anthropogenic drivers. These can be divided into those directly related to climatic change, contributing to an expansion in the tick's geographic range at extremes of altitude in central Europe, and at extremes of latitude in Scandinavia; those related to changes in the distribution of tick hosts, particularly roe deer and other cervids; other ecological changes such as habitat connectivity and changes in land management; and finally, anthropogenically induced changes.

Monitoring plastic ingestion by the northern fulmar Fulmarus glacialis in the North Sea.

The abundance of plastics in stomachs of northern fulmars from the North Sea is used in the OSPAR Ecological Quality Objective (EcoQO) for marine litter. The preliminary EcoQO defines acceptable ecological quality as the situation where no more than 10% of fulmars exceed a critical level of 0.1 g of plastic in the stomach.

Chlamydophila psittaci in Fulmars, the Faroe Islands.

Chlamydophila psittaci was detected in 10% of 431 fulmars examined from the Faroe Islands. Analysis of ompA showed a sequence almost identical to that of the type strain. The origin of C.