Gastrointestinal Strongyles in Wild Ruminants

Parasitologists have long studied helminth infections in wildlife species and have documented the existence of many organisms from a diversity of mammalian hosts. With this accumulation of information has come improved understanding of the significance of these organisms and the diseases they produce in their mammalian hosts. Some of the most notable examples include the metastrongyloid lungworms, Trichinella spiralis, and Elaeophora schneideri, which are covered separately in this volume. It is, however, for the group of parasites referred to as gastrointestinal nematodes that we have accumulated the most data. Only recently has progress been made in determining the significance of these strongylate nematodes with respect to their potential impact on the morbidity and mortality of the ruminants that they infect. The accumulation of information on diseases of wild animals into a single combined volume has been slow, but progress has coincided with the proliferation of data for host and parasite interactions. Numerous references including Alaskan Wildlife Diseases (Dieterich 1981), Manual of Common Wildlife Diseases in Colorado (Adrian 1981), Field Manual of Wildlife Diseases in the Southeastern United States (Davidson and Nettles 1988), Zoo and Wildlife Medicine (Fowler 1993), and the previous editions of Parasitic Diseases of Wild Mammals (Davis and Anderson 1971) have all made significant contributions to our knowledge. Beyond North America, Dunn (1969) and Govorka et al. (1988) provided excellent compilations on the helminths in wild ruminants. In the 1971 printing of Parasitic Diseases of Mammals, however, there was no general coverage of gastrointestinal nematodes, and only T. spiralis was addressed. Herein, we present the first synoptic review of the strongylate nematodes that occur in the gastrointestinal system of wild ruminants from North America

Ending a decade of deception: a valiant failure, a not-so-valiant failure, and a success story

Prior studies involving two methods, Brooks Parsimony Analysis (BPA) and TreeMap, have found BPA to be the more reliable method. Recent criticisms leveled at these studies argue that the tests were unfairly created and biased in favor of BPA. The authors of a recent critique offered new exemplars to demonstrate flaws in BPA, plus a simple fix to correct the flaws found in TreeMap. A re-evaluation of their exemplars clearly shows that the authors' calculations are incorrect, their understanding of the methods is lacking, and that their simple fix does not work. Additional analyses using TreeMap 2.02 are run to show that TreeMap 2.02, like TreeMap 1.0, cannot adequately deal with widespread parasites, contrary to the claims of its supporters. Furthermore, the exemplars corroborate previous findings that BPA, when calculated correctly, is more reliable than TreeMap1.0 and TreeMap 2.02 and therefore the method of choice in coevolutionary and biogeographic studies.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75083/1/j.1096-0031.2003.00011.x.pd

Progress Report to the Department Committee on Graduate Study and Research

Progress Report to the Department Committee on Graduate Study and Research on a Trouble-Location Scheme for a Digital Electronic Computer

Trichinella britovi etiological agent of sylvatic trichinellosis in the Republic of Guinea (West Africa) and a re-evaluation of geographical distribution for encapsulated species in Africa

In West Africa, Trichinella infection was documented in humans and animals from Senegal in the 1960s, and the biological characters of one isolate showed a lower infectivity to domestic pigs and rodents when compared with that of a Trichinella spiralis pig isolate from Europe. To identify the Trichinella species present in West Africa, a survey was conducted in a total of 160 wild animals in the Republic of Guinea. Three Viverridae, one true civet (Viverra civetta) and two African palm civets (Nandinia binotata) from the Fouta Djallon Massif, Pilimini Subprefecture, were found positive by artificial digestion of muscle samples. Trichinella larvae from these three viverrids were identified as Trichinella britovi and no difference was detected in three examined sequences from these African isolates and the reference strain of T. britovi from Europe, indicating common ancestry, an historically continuous geographic distribution, and recent isolation for African and European populations. The detection of T. britovi in West Africa modifies our knowledge about the distribution of encapsulated species of Trichinella in Africa. Thus, Trichinella nelsoni is now considered to have a distribution limited to the Eastern part of the Afrotropical region from Kenya to South Africa. This provides a plausible explanation for the presence of Trichinella T8 in Namibia and South Africa, and further suggests that T. britovi could be the Trichinella species circulating among wild animals of Northern Africa

A precision study of the fine tuning in the DiracNMSSM

Recently the DiracNMSSM has been proposed as a possible solution to reduce the fine tuning in supersymmetry. We determine the degree of fine tuning needed in the DiracNMSSM with and without non-universal gaugino masses and compare it with the fine tuning in the GNMSSM. To apply reasonable cuts on the allowed parameter regions we perform a precise calculation of the Higgs mass. In addition, we include the limits from direct SUSY searches and dark matter abundance. We find that both models are comparable in terms of fine tuning, with the minimal fine tuning in the GNMSSM slightly smaller.Comment: 20 pages + appendices, 10 figure

A unique Z_4^R symmetry for the MSSM

We consider the possible anomaly free Abelian discrete symmetries of the MSSM that forbid the mu-term at perturbative order. Allowing for anomaly cancellation via the Green-Schwarz mechanism we identify discrete R-symmetries as the only possibility and prove that there is a unique Z_4^R symmetry that commutes with SO(10). We argue that non-perturbative effects will generate a mu-term of electroweak order thus solving the mu-problem. The non-perturbative effects break the Z_4^R symmetry leaving an exact Z_2 matter parity. As a result dimension four baryon- and lepton-number violating operators are absent while, at the non-perturbative level, dimension five baryon- and lepton-number violating operators get induced but are highly suppressed so that the nucleon decay rate is well within present bounds.Comment: 6 page

The generalised NMSSM at one loop: fine tuning and phenomenology

We determine the degree of fine tuning needed in a generalised version of the NMSSM that follows from an underlying Z4 or Z8 R symmetry. We find that it is significantly less than is found in the MSSM or NMSSM and extends the range of Higgs mass that have acceptable fine tuning up to Higgs masses of mh ~ 130 GeV. For universal boundary conditions analogous to the CMSSM the phenomenology is rather MSSM like with the singlet states typically rather heavy. For more general boundary conditions the singlet states can be light, leading to interesting signatures at the LHC and direct detection experiments.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, matches published versio

The Gravitino-Stau Scenario after Catalyzed BBN

We consider the impact of Catalyzed Big Bang Nucleosynthesis on theories with a gravitino LSP and a charged slepton NLSP. In models where the gravitino to gaugino mass ratio is bounded from below, such as gaugino-mediated SUSY breaking, we derive a lower bound on the gaugino mass parameter m_1/2. As a concrete example, we determine the parameter space of gaugino mediation that is compatible with all cosmological constraints.Comment: 1+14 pages, 6 figures; v2: minor clarifications, 1 reference added, matches version to appear in JCA

The fine-tuning of the generalised NMSSM

We determine the degree of fine-tuning needed in a generalised version of the NMSSM that follows from an underlying Z4 or Z8 R-symmetry. We find that it is significantly less than is found in the MSSM or NMSSM and extends the range of Higgs mass that have acceptable fine-tuning. Remarkably the minimal fine-tuning is achieved for Higgs masses of around 130 GeV.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure