Managing marine disease emergencies in an era of rapid change

Infectious marine diseases can decimate populations and are increasing among some taxa due to global change and our increasing reliance on marine environments. Marine diseases become emergencies when significant ecological, economic or social impacts occur. We can prepare for and manage these emergencies through improved surveillance, and the development and iterative refinement of approaches to mitigate disease and its impacts. Improving surveillance requires fast, accurate diagnoses, forecasting disease risk and real-time monitoring of disease-promoting environmental conditions. Diversifying impact mitigation involves increasing host resilience to disease, reducing pathogen abundance and managing environmental factors that facilitate disease. Disease surveillance and mitigation can be adaptive if informed by research advances and catalysed by communication among observers, researchers and decision-makers using information-sharing platforms. Recent increases in the awareness of the threats posed by marine diseases may lead to policy frameworks that facilitate the responses and management that marine disease emergencies require

Investigating the Host-Range of the Rust Fungus Puccinia psidii sensu lato across Tribes of the Family Myrtaceae Present in Australia

The exotic rust fungus Puccinia psidii sensu lato was first detected in Australia in April 2010. This study aimed to determine the host-range potential of this accession of the rust by testing its pathogenicity on plants of 122 taxa, representative of the 15 tribes of the subfamily Myrtoideae in the family Myrtaceae. Each taxon was tested in two separate trials (unless indicated otherwise) that comprised up to five replicates per taxon and six replicates of a positive control (Syzygium jambos). No visible symptoms were observed on the following four taxa in either trial: Eucalyptus grandis×camaldulensis, E. moluccana, Lophostemon confertus and Sannantha angusta. Only small chlorotic or necrotic flecks without any uredinia (rust fruiting bodies) were observed on inoculated leaves of seven other taxa (Acca sellowiana, Corymbia calophylla ‘Rosea’, Lophostemon suaveolens, Psidium cattleyanum, P. guajava ‘Hawaiian’ and ‘Indian’, Syzygium unipunctatum). Fully-developed uredinia were observed on all replicates across both trials of 28 taxa from 8 tribes belonging to the following 17 genera: Agonis, Austromyrtus, Beaufortia, Callistemon, Calothamnus, Chamelaucium, Darwinia, Eucalyptus, Gossia, Kunzea, Leptospermum, Melaleuca, Metrosideros, Syzygium, Thryptomene, Tristania, Verticordia. In contrast, the remaining 83 taxa inoculated, including the majority of Corymbia and Eucalyptus species, developed a broad range of symptoms, often across the full spectrum, from fully-developed uredinia to no visible symptoms. These results were encouraging as they indicate that some levels of genetic resistance to the rust possibly exist in these taxa. Overall, our results indicated no apparent association between the presence or absence of disease symptoms and the phylogenetic relatedness of taxa. It is most likely that the majority of the thousands of Myrtaceae species found in Australia have the potential to become infected to some degree by the rust, although this wide host range may not be fully realized in the field

Adaptive tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy

Tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy, such as tip-enhanced photoluminescence (TEPL) and tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS), generally suffers from inconsistent signal enhancement and difficulty in polarization-resolved measurement. To address this problem, we present adaptive tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy optimizing the nano-optical vector-field at the tip apex. Specifically, we demonstrate dynamic wavefront shaping of the excitation field to effectively couple light to the tip and adaptively control for enhanced sensitivity and polarization-controlled TEPL and TERS. Employing a sequence feedback algorithm, we achieve similar to 4.4x10(4)-fold TEPL enhancement of a WSe2 monolayer which is >2x larger than the normal TEPL intensity without wavefront shaping. In addition, with dynamical near-field polarization control in TERS, we demonstrate the investigation of conformational heterogeneity of brilliant cresyl blue molecules and the controllable observation of IR-active modes due to a large gradient field effect. Adaptive tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy thus provides for a systematic approach towards computational nanoscopy making optical nano-imaging more robust and widely deployable. Tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy suffers from inconsistent signal and difficulty in polarization-resolved measurement. Here, the authors present adaptive tip-enhanced nano-spectroscopy, which enables the additional signal enhancement and near-field polarization control via dynamic wavefront shaping

Primate responses to changing environments in the anthropocene

Most primates have slow life-histories and long generation times. Because environmental change is occurring at an unprecedented rate, gene-based adaptations are unlikely to evolve fast enough to offer successful responses to these changes. The paper reviews the most common types of habitat/landscape alterations, the extent of human-primate interactions, and the impact of climate change. It demonstrates how understanding behavioural flexibility as a response to environmental change will be crucial to optimize conservation efforts by constructing informed management plans. Comparisons across species, space, and time can be used to draw generalizations about primate responses to environmental change while considering their behavioural flexibility

Microcell parasites of molluscs: introduction to DAO Special 7

First discovered decades ago, microcell protistan parasites of the genera Bonamia and Mikrocytos remain relevant today for their economic impacts on growing molluscan aquaculture industries and fisheries. Bonamia parasites have received more attention over the years in part because they are more widespread and thus of wider concern, but there has been renewed interest in Mikrocytos recently with the generation of important new findings. Among these has been the surprising observation that Mikrocytos has phylogenetic affinities to the Rhizaria, which includes the haplosporidian protists and the genus Bonamia. This Diseases of Aquatic Organisms Special, emerging from the 5th Meeting of the Microcell Working Group held at the Central Veterinary Institute, Lelystad, the Netherlands, in February 2012, presents new insights into Mikrocytos and Bonamia diversity, distributions, diagnostics, ultrastructure, and infection dynamics, and captures major developments in the field since the last review of these genera in 2004

Shellfish tissues evaluated for Perkinsus spp. using the Ray\u27s fluid thioglycollate medium culture assay can be used for downstream molecular assays

Ray\u27s fluid thioglycollate medium (RFTM) culture assay is the standard, recommended method for surveillance of Perkinsus spp. infections in marine molluscs. In this assay, shellfish tissues are incubated in RFTM, stained with Lugol\u27s iodine solution to render Perkinsus spp. cells blue-black, and evaluated microscopically to rate infection intensities. A limitation of this assay, however, is the lack of pathogen species specificity. Generally, identification of Perkinsus spp. requires DNA sequence analysis of parallel or additional samples since the exposure to iodine is believed to hamper DNA amplification from samples processed by the RFTM assay. However, we show that P, marinus DNA can be successfully amplified by PCR from Crassostrea virginica tissues cultured in RFTM and stained with Lugol\u27s iodine. The beneficial consequence is that, where necessary, DNA sequence data may be obtained from RFTM-cultured tissues, allowing the identification of the Perkinsus sp. responsible for an observed infection. This would obviate further sampling, representing gain of time and reduction in cost, where a Perkinsus sp. is unexpectedly observed in new host(s) or location(s) but where parallel samples are not available for molecular diagnostics. Laboratories without molecular diagnostic tools for Perkinsus spp. may fix presumptive Perkinsus sp.-positive culture material in 95% ethanol for transport to, and subsequent analysis by, a laboratory that does have this capacity