Publications by authors named "L D Rea"

Article Synopsis
  • The study analyzes how factors like location, age, diet, and metabolism affect the concentration of essential and non-essential elements in Steller sea lion pups from different Aleutian Islands rookeries.
  • Differences in element concentrations, like higher mercury in one rookery and higher sulfur in another, were found, indicating locality impacts wildlife health.
  • The research revealed strong interactions among elements in lanugo, suggesting that these relationships are important for understanding the health and metabolism of sea lion pups.
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Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a gram-negative bacterium, accounts for 7% of all hospital-acquired infections. Despite advances in medicine and antibiotic therapy, P. aeruginosa infection still results in high mortality rates of up to 62% in certain patient groups.

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Steller sea lions (SSL) are sentinels for monitoring environmental contaminants in remote areas of the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. Therefore, concentrations of several organochlorines (OCs) were measured in blood from 123 SSL pups sampled from 3 regions; the western Aleutian Islands (WAI), central Aleutian Islands (CAI), and the central Gulf of Alaska. Blood, blubber, and milk from 12 adult female SSL from WAI, CAI and southeast Alaska also were analyzed.

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Mercury is a global contaminant that bioaccumulates in a tissue-specific manner in long-lived predators such as Steller sea lions (SSL). Bone is a well-preserved material amenable for studying millennial scale trends; however, little is known about the distribution and variability of total mercury concentrations ([THg]) within individual bones and among bone elements in SSL. We assessed SSL bone [THg] variability with respect to physiologic age, bone type, longitudinally within a bone, and among bone elements.

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We evaluated the Precision Xtra™ ketometer as part of a larger study categorizing fasting status of free-ranging Steller sea lion (; SSL) pups which necessitated the identification of plasma β-hydroxybutyrate concentrations ([β-HBA]) around a threshold of <0.3 and ≥0.3 mmol/l.

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