14,316 results match your criteria: "Department of Fish Ecology & Evolution EAWAG Centre for Ecology[Affiliation]"

Analysis of microplastic contamination and associated human health risks in Clarias gariepinus and Oreochromis niloticus from Kubanni Reservoir, Zaria Nigeria.

Environ Pollut

January 2025

Department of Ecology, University of Brasília, Brazil; Department of Botany, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria; Department of Ecology, Institute of Biosciences, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Electronic address:

Article Synopsis
  • Environmental safety is increasingly threatened by microplastic pollution, particularly in aquatic environments, with limited studies in developing countries compared to developed regions.
  • The study focused on two fish species in Nigeria's Kubanni Reservoir, revealing that fibers were the most common microplastic type found, with fish showing signs of oxidative stress and cellular damage from ingestion.
  • Consumption of these fish poses significant health risks, as individuals could ingest a high number of microplastic particles, highlighting the urgent need for attention to microplastic contamination and its impacts on public health.
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Assessment of the relative cardiotoxicity and behavioral effects of butylated hydroxytoluene and its metabolites in developing zebrafish (Danio rerio).

Sci Total Environ

December 2024

Department of Physiological Sciences and Center for Environmental and Human Toxicology, University of Florida Genetics Institute, Interdisciplinary Program in Biomedical Sciences Neuroscience, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.

Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and its transformation products are ubiquitously detected in aquatic environments. Despite studies reporting on the adverse effects of BHT exposure in early-staged zebrafish, the comparative toxicity of its metabolites is not known. To address this, zebrafish embryos were exposed continuously to 0.

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Marine litter pollution affects even remote environments such as the Arctic regions and their biodiversity. However, due to the inaccessibility and difficulty of regular observations in these environments, further studies are needed to fill the knowledge gaps. In this regard, the present investigation provides new insights on microplastic contamination levels in Arctic riverfish by analyzing, for the first time, plastic ingestion by the European grayling Thymallus thymallus from the Teno River (northern Finland), an important fishery resource and vulnerable species; and performing a preliminary ecological risk assessment of microplastics in the Finnish river using the European grayling.

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The Cyathocotylidae Mühling, 1896 is a small but broadly distributed family of digeneans parasitic in a wide range of vertebrate definitive hosts, from fish to mammals. Despite existing taxonomic questions, only a few studies have generated DNA sequence data from cyathocotylids, and only a single publication included sequence data from a cyathocotylid parasitic in snakes. Four genera are known to infect snakes: GogateaLutz, 1935, Szidatia Dubois, 1938, MesostephanoidesDubois, 1951, and SerpentostephanusSudarikov, 1961.

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Trypanosoma cruzi infection in American black bears (Ursus americanus): A case report in a cub from California and serologic survey for exposure in wild black bears from several states.

Vet Parasitol Reg Stud Reports

November 2024

Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, 180 E Green Street, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA; Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, 589 D.W. Brooks Drive, Wildlife Health Building, College of Veterinary Medicine, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA; Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA. Electronic address:

Trypanosoma cruzi is an important cause of disease and death in humans and dogs, and although wildlife infections are common, less is known about disease manifestations. A 12-week-old male American black bear (Ursus americanus) cub with mild lethargy and anorexia presented to a wildlife rehabilitation center in Lake Tahoe, California. The cub continued to become increasingly weak and showed decreasing interest in play and other activities.

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The Antarctic bald notothen, Trematomus borchgrevinki (family Nototheniidae) occupies a high latitude, ice-laden environment and represents an extreme example of cold-specialization among fishes. We present the first, high-quality, chromosome-scale genome of a female T. borchgrevinki individual comprised of 23 putative chromosomes, the largest of which is 65 megabasepairs (Mbp) in length.

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New approaches to abundance surveying utilizing unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) are proving to be effective tools in marine and terrestrial environments. We explored UAV efficacy for surveys in the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR), where relative abundance patterns of juvenile sharks and subsequent classifications of putative nursery areas based on environmental drivers are lacking. The UAV method allowed greater temporal and spatial coverage.

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The effects of chlorpyrifos, a frequently detected organophosphate in aquatic ecosystems, on biochemical (protein and glycogen) contents and oxidative enzyme activities (catalase and lipid peroxidation) in liver, muscle and gill tissues of three freshwater fish Trichogaster fasciata, Mystus vittatus and Heteropneustes fossilis were evaluated after 21-day exposure to 1 and 10% of 96 h LC of this pesticide, which were 1.63 and 16.3 µg L; 5.

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Pulsed resources resulting from animal migrations represent important, transient influxes of high resource availability into recipient communities. The ability of predators to respond and exploit these large increases in background resource availability, however, may be constrained when the timing and magnitude of the resource pulse vary across years. In coastal Newfoundland, Canada, we studied aggregative responses of multiple seabird predators to the annual inshore pulse of a key forage fish species, capelin (Mallotus villosus).

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Ubiquitous genome streamlined in freshwater environments.

ISME Commun

January 2024

Department of Aquatic Microbial Ecology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Na Sadkach 7, 37005 České Budějovice, Czech Republic.

are abundant in soil, peatlands, and sediments, but their ecology in freshwater environments remains understudied. UBA12189, an genus, is an uncultivated, genome-streamlined lineage with a small genome size found in aquatic environments where detailed genomic analyses are lacking. Here, we analyzed 66 MAGs of UBA12189 (including one complete genome) from freshwater lakes and rivers in Europe, North America, and Asia.

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Genomic resources are important for evaluating genetic diversity and supporting conservation efforts. The garden dormouse () is a small rodent that has experienced one of the most severe modern population declines in Europe. We present a high-quality haplotype-resolved reference genome for the garden dormouse, and combine comprehensive short and long-read transcriptomics data sets with homology-based methods to generate a highly complete gene annotation.

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Noninvasive Methods Unveil the Trophic Transmission of the Tapeworm in Gull-Billed Terns.

Ecol Evol

November 2024

Departamento de Anatomía, Biología Celular y Zoología, Facultad de Ciencias Universidad de Extremadura Badajoz Spain.

Recent developments in microscopic and molecular tools have allowed the implementation of new approaches for assessing parasitic infections in wildlife populations. This is particularly important for the noninvasive detection and quantification of endoparasites in live animals. Here, we combined copromicroscopic (Mini-FLOTAC) and molecular (qPCR) techniques to detect the infection of the macroparasite (Cestoda, Pseudophyllidea) in fresh droppings of Gull-billed Terns (Charadriiformes, Laridae) breeding in southwestern Spain.

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Coastal marine and estuarine systems are subject to enormous endogenous and exogenous pressures, particularly climate change, while at the same time being highly productive sources and nurseries for fish populations. Interactions between host and microbiome are increasingly recognized for their importance for fish health, with growing evidence indicating that increasing environmental pressures impact host resilience and favor the raise of opportunistic bacterial taxa. The microbial composition of the gill mucus reflects environmental conditions and represents an entry route for pathogens into the fish body.

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Article Synopsis
  • Floodplains are rich ecosystems affected by climate change and human actions, leading to many endangered species, like the Itasenpara bitterling fish in Japan, which needed population history studies for conservation efforts.
  • Researchers used genetic sequences to analyze the bitterling's population structure and found surprising patterns of gene flow and differentiation occurring long after the geological changes expected to drive those patterns.
  • The study indicates that these fish adapted by dispersing across mountains and were heavily impacted by both climate cycles and human activities, emphasizing the need for thoughtful conservation strategies based on these findings.
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Despite evidence that certain diseases of marine wildlife are increasing, long-term infection data are often lacking. Archived samples of hosts from natural history collections offer a powerful tool for evaluating temporal changes in parasitism. Using vouchered fish collections from the Southern Caribbean, we investigated long-term (1905-2022) shifts in infections by the trematode spp.

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Ponto-Caspian gobies became highly abundant in many regions outside their native distribution range (e.g. in the Rhine River system).

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Article Synopsis
  • This study examines oxidative stress in the fish species Cottus gobio from Dimon Lake in northeast Italy, focusing on how environmental changes affect their health and adaptation.
  • Seasonal changes in water chemistry were observed, with notable differences in oxygen and nutrient levels between summer and autumn, impacting fish physiology.
  • The research found significant variations in oxidative stress biomarkers across different organs and seasons, emphasizing the role of liver in detoxification and the influence of water parameters, particularly pH, on fish health in high-mountain ecosystems.
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Survey-based inference of continental African elephant decline.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

November 2024

Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523.

Long-term quantification of temporal species trends is fundamental to the assignment of conservation status, which in turn is critical for planning and targeting management interventions. However, monitoring effort and methodologies can change over the assessment period, resulting in heterogeneous data that are difficult to interpret. Here, we develop a hierarchical, random effects Bayesian model to estimate site-level trends in density of African elephants from geographically disparate survey data.

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Why Is It Too Cold? Towards a Mechanistic Understanding of Cold-Water Pollution Effects on Recruitment of an Imperiled Warmwater Fish.

Mol Ecol

January 2025

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

Environmental temperature shapes the ontogeny of ectotherms by influencing rates of growth and development which can be key determinants of survival. Whereas the escalating impacts of water management on freshwater ecosystems is well documented, the effects of cold-water releases from dams-which can alter downstream temperatures-remains relatively underexplored but may present novel challenges to endemic ectotherms. Specifically, little is known about how thermal depressions reshape phenotypic and genetic patterns during larval metamorphosis for fishes that evolved in warmwater systems.

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Occurrence of juvenile porbeagle sharks (Lamna nasus) in the northern coast of Spain.

J Fish Biol

November 2024

Association for the Study and Conservation of Elasmobranchs and its Ecosystems (Catsharks), Barcelona, Spain.

Opportunistic records can provide valuable information on certain species, including the critically endangered porbeagle shark (Lamna nasus). This note documents the occurrence of three juveniles, with approximate 120-, 88-, and 85-cm fork lengths respectively, observed along the coast of Asturias, Spain, in 2024. Given the three distinct scenarios in which these records respectively occurred (incidental capture, washed ashore and stranding), they emphasize the role of citizen science in identifying potential threats to this species, particularly in early stages of life, in a region that may be important and previously overlooked.

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sp. nov. (Bothriocephalidae Blanchard, 1849), a cestode parasite of the shorthead lizardfish (Synodontidae) from the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

J Helminthol

November 2024

Center for Research in Tropical Diseases (CIET), Faculty of Microbiology, University of Costa Rica, 11501-2060 San Pedro de Montes de Oca, San José, Costa Rica.

A new species of bothriocephalid cestode in the genus is described from the intestine of the shorthead lizardfish from the north Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The new species is described based on an integrative taxonomic approach that includes the use of light and scanning electron microscopy, 28S rDNA sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis. sp.

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Migratory animals play a crucial role in connecting distinct habitats by transferring matter and energy across ecosystem boundaries. In the North Atlantic, anadromous species exemplify this through their movement between freshwater and marine environments. Alosids, including species such as alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus), blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis), and American shad (Alosa sapidissima), exhibit this migratory behavior to maximize growth and fecundity and are, therefore, vital components of Atlantic coastal ecosystems.

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Convergent evolution in shape in European lineages of gobies.

Evolution

November 2024

Department of Ecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Viničná 7, Prague 2, 12844, Czech Republic.

Article Synopsis
  • Certain animal groups underwent significant changes in morphology, allowing them to adapt to diverse environments, illustrating the concept of convergent evolution.
  • Gobies, a diverse group of fishes, exhibit a variety of shapes and lifestyles, which have enabled them to colonize various habitats in Europe.
  • Through analyses of body shape changes, researchers found that gobies demonstrate convergent evolution linked to their locomotion in four ecological groups, providing insights into how species adapt to their environments.
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Some ecological aspects of Monogeneans (Platyhelminthes) ectoparasites of Enteromius guirali Thominot, 1886 (Pisces: Cyprinidae) from Cesala River in Cameroon.

Parasitol Res

November 2024

Laboratory of Parasitology and Ecology, Department of Animal Biology and Physiology, Faculty of Science, University of Yaoundé I, Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Fish are exposed to various parasites such as monogeneans which are flatworms that preferentially affect the gills and skin of these hosts. This study represents the first investigation concerning the distribution of monogenean infracommunities of Enteromius guirali in Cameroon. A total of 100 fish were collected from Cesala River and preserved in 8% formalin solution.

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Optimizing Eurasian Perch Production: Innovative Aquaculture in Earthen Ponds Using RAS and RAMPS-Economic Perspective.

Animals (Basel)

October 2024

Department of Tourism, Recreation and Ecology, Institute of Engineering and Environmental Protection, Faculty of Geoengineering, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, ul. Oczapowskiego 5, 10-719 Olsztyn, Poland.

Aquaculture in rural areas, carried out in accordance with current EU requirements, aims to contribute significantly to the conservation of the biodiversity of aquatic resources, the protection of which is a prerequisite for sustainable economic and social development. The objective of this study was to present the conceptual and technical framework and to analyze the costs and profitability of producing the consumer-attractive Eurasian perch ( L.) based on the untapped potential of hatchery infrastructure and dedicated earthen ponds for common carp ( L.

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