Agile training to help enable standardisation of phytoplankton sampling and gross gill terminology across the Scottish sector

Current aquaculture operations in the UK are dominated by finfish farming in Scotland, contributing over £1.8 billion to the Scottish economy with the ambition to double this value by 2030. Finfish health is the top priority across the sector as healthy fish enjoy higher survival rates. One of the most important threats is the occurrence of gill disease, e.g. due to HABs, with potentially devastating impacts on fish health resulting in mortality, reduced welfare, and associated losses in profit on the rise. To understand this threat better, high-quality data generation for reporting is essential. For example, a significant body of work – catalysed by the Scottish Government’s Farmed Fish Health Framework and involving SAIC, agencies, regulators, and a large representation from producers within the sector – acknowledged the need for procedures for sustained and standardised surveillance and reporting of algal blooms, and a standardised operating procedure was developed. The sector representatives are unanimous in the need for developing specific skills to operate under the HABs SOP and in fish health generally. Two courses have been funded by Defra, UK, in the area of aquaculture operators’ skills development. The first course aims for standardisation of HABs sampling and classification, and understanding of the data and modelling associated with mitigation and management of HABs events, and will be delivered through a partnership between SAIC, the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and Lantra. The second course is under the health framework and aims to improve the skills and knowledge of technicians and veterinary professionals currently working in, or interested in diversifying into, the seafood sector. An initial aim of the latter course, a partnership between SRUC and SSF, is to standardise salmon gross gill health monitoring terminology

Agile training to help enable standardisation of phytoplankton sampling and gross gill terminology across the Scottish sector

Current aquaculture operations in the UK are dominated by finfish farming in Scotland, contributing over £1.8 billion to the Scottish economy with the ambition to double this value by 2030. Finfish health is the top priority across the sector as healthy fish enjoy higher survival rates. One of the most important threats is the occurrence of gill disease, e.g. due to HABs, with potentially devastating impacts on fish health resulting in mortality, reduced welfare, and associated losses in profit on the rise. To understand this threat better, high-quality data generation for reporting is essential. For example, a significant body of work – catalysed by the Scottish Government’s Farmed Fish Health Framework and involving SAIC, agencies, regulators, and a large representation from producers within the sector – acknowledged the need for procedures for sustained and standardised surveillance and reporting of algal blooms, and a standardised operating procedure was developed. The sector representatives are unanimous in the need for developing specific skills to operate under the HABs SOP and in fish health generally. Two courses have been funded by Defra, UK, in the area of aquaculture operators’ skills development. The first course aims for standardisation of HABs sampling and classification, and understanding of the data and modelling associated with mitigation and management of HABs events, and will be delivered through a partnership between SAIC, the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and Lantra. The second course is under the health framework and aims to improve the skills and knowledge of technicians and veterinary professionals currently working in, or interested in diversifying into, the seafood sector. An initial aim of the latter course, a partnership between SRUC and SSF, is to standardise salmon gross gill health monitoring terminology

Prenatal maternal effects appear to be insensitive to experimental or natural environmental variation:Environmental effects on egg traits

In many birds, hatching asynchrony is a common phenomenon, primarily driven by patterns of incubation behaviour. However, experimental results in blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) have shown that asynchrony is reduced by intrinsic properties of later eggs that accelerate prenatal development. These intrinsic differences between early and late eggs could be driven by changes in resource availability to females, which are then passively passed onto the egg. Alternatively, it may be due to an anticipatory maternal effect, wherein some signal or resource is actively placed within the egg, which is beneficial to those eggs laid late within the clutch. In order to distinguish between these hypotheses we designed a supplementary feeding experiment, wherein females were provided with food at certain times during the laying phase. This had no discernible effect on development rate, or other egg characteristics, consistent with anticipatory maternal effects. Using a larger dataset we also tested whether natural environmental variation (weather) during egg formation affected maternal investment in eggs. Similarly, egg characteristics were found to be relatively insensitive to the environmental variation, supporting the experimental results.</p

Quantifying the recent expansion of native invasive rush species in a UK upland environment

Rushes, such as soft rush (Juncus effusus L.), hard rush (Juncus inflexus L.) and compact rush (Juncus conglomeratus L.) have become problem species within upland grasslands across the UK and the coastal grasslands of western Norway. Indeed, being largely unpalatable to livestock and having a vigorous reproductive ecology means that they can rapidly come to dominate swards. However, rush dominance results in a reduction in grassland biodiversity and farm productivity. Anecdotal evidence from the UK suggests that rush cover within marginal upland grasslands has increased considerably in recent decades. Yet, there is currently no published evidence to support this observation. Here, we use recent and historical Google Earth imagery to measure changes in rush frequency over a 13-year period within four survey years: 2005, 2009, 2015 and 2018. During each survey year, we quantified rush presence or absence using a series of quadrats located within 300 upland grassland plots in the West Pennine Moors, UK. Data were analysed in two stages, first, by calculating mean rush frequencies per sample year using all the available plot-year combinations (the full dataset), and second by examining 25 differences in rush frequency using only the plots for which rush frequency data were available in every sample year (the continuous dataset). The full dataset indicated that rush frequency has increased by 82% between 2005 and 2018. Similarly, the continuous dataset suggested that rush frequency has increased by 174% over the same period, with the increases in frequency being statistically significant (P<0.05) between 2005-2018 and 2009-2018. We discuss the potential drivers of rush expansion in the West Pennine Moors, the ecological and agronomic implications of grassland rush infestations, and priorities for future research

Predicting climate impacts on health at sub-seasonal to seasonal timescales.

23 pagesInternational audienceThe potential to use sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) prediction systems for outcomes in health is presented, using four case studies of malaria, dengue, heat waves, and meningococcal meningitis. While promising, many such applications are currently in the demonstration phase, and examples of operationalizing S2S-based early warning systems, fully integrated with decision support, have yet to emerge. Potential reasons for this operationalization bottleneck are discussed, which include restrictions on open access to health and climate data, the unfulfilled requirement for training in the use of such systems, and the mismatch between the prediction paradigm and the decision entry points in health-planning systems. The S2S project sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization may help to demonstrate the potential application of climate information, but the lack of real-time access inhibits the operationalization of evaluated systems. It is recommended that partnership platforms, established through the Global Framework for Climate Services and related mechanisms, enable the climate and health academic and operational communities to work together on real-time provision and assessment of health early warning systems. This is particularly important in developing countries where climate-driven health outcomes can be severe