The dog and cat population on Maio Island, Cape Verde: characterisation and prediction based on household survey and remotely sensed imagery

The objective was to estimate and characterise the dog and cat population on Maio Island, Cape Verde. Remotely sensed imagery was used to document the number of houses across the island and a household survey was carried out in six administrative areas recording the location of each animal using a global positioning system instrument. Linear statistical models were applied to predict the dog and cat populations based on the number of houses found and according to various levels of data aggregation. In the surveyed localities, a total of 457 dogs and 306 cats were found. The majority of animals had owners and only a few had free access to outdoor activities. The estimated population size was 531 dogs [95% confidence interval (CI): 453-609] and 354 cats (95% CI: 275-431). Stray animals were not a concern on the island in contrast to the rest of the countr

The prevalence of brucellosis and bovine tuberculosis in ruminants in Sidi Kacem Province, Morocco

Bovine tuberculosis (BTB) and brucellosis are major endemic zoonoses in ruminants in Morocco that impact on both animal and human health. This study presents an assessment of the epidemiological and socioeconomic burden of bacterial zoonoses in Sidi Kacem Province in Northern Morocco from a cross-sectional survey of 125 cattle and/or small ruminantowning households. In total, 1082 sheep and goats were examined from 81 households. The single intradermal comparative cervical test to screen for bovine tuberculosis was undertaken on 1194 cattle from 123 households and all cattle were blood sampled. Cattle and small ruminant sera were tested for brucellosis using the standard Rose Bengal Test (sRBT) and the modified Rose Bengal Test (mRBT). Bacteriology was performed on 21 milk samples obtained from cattle that were seropositive for brucellosis for isolation and phenotyping of circulating Brucella strains. Individual and herd prevalence for BTB in cattle of 20.4% (95% CI 18%-23%) and 57.7% (95% CI 48%-66%), respectively, were observed in this study. The prevalence of brucellosis in cattle at individual and herd level was 1.9% (95% CI 1.2%-2.8%) and 9% (95% CI 4.5%-1.5%), respectively. Brucella pathogens were isolated from three cattle milk samples and were identified as B. abortus using Bruceladder (R) multiplex PCR and B. abortus biovar 1 by classical phenotyping. All small ruminants were seronegative to sRBT, two were positive to mRBT. A higher risk of BTB and brucellosis was observed in cattle in intensive livestock systems, in imported and crossed breeds and in animals from larger herds (>15). The three risk factors were usually present in the same herds, leading to higher transmission risk and persistence of both zoonoses. These results highlight the importance of implementing control strategies for both BTB and brucellosis to reduce productivity losses and the risk of transmission to humans. Prioritising control for BTB and brucellosis in intensive livestock production systems is essential for human and animal health

Brucellosis as an Emerging Threat in Developing Economies:Lessons from Nigeria

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, has a large proportion of the world's poor livestock keepers, and is a hotspot for neglected zoonoses. A review of the 127 accessible publications on brucellosis in Nigeria reveals only scant and fragmented evidence on its spatial and temporal distribution in different epidemiological contexts. The few bacteriological studies conducted demonstrate the existence of Brucella abortus in cattle and sheep, but evidence for B. melitensis in small ruminants is dated and unclear. The bulk of the evidence consists of seroprevalence studies, but test standardization and validation are not always adequately described, and misinterpretations exist with regard to sensitivity and/or specificity and ability to identify the infecting Brucella species. Despite this, early studies suggest that although brucellosis was endemic in extensive nomadic systems, seroprevalence was low, and brucellosis was not perceived as a real burden; recent studies, however, may reflect a changing trend. Concerning human brucellosis, no studies have identified the Brucella species and most reports provide only serological evidence of contact with Brucella in the classical risk groups; some suggest brucellosis misdiagnoses as malaria or other febrile conditions. The investigation of a severe outbreak that occurred in the late 1970s describes the emergence of animal and human disease caused by the settling of previously nomadic populations during the Sahelian drought. There appears to be an increasing risk of re-emergence of brucellosis in sub-Saharan Africa, as a result of the co-existence of pastoralist movements and the increase of intensive management resulting from growing urbanization and food demand. Highly contagious zoonoses like brucellosis pose a threat with far-reaching social and political consequences

Optimizing denominator data estimation through a multimodel approach

To assess the risk of (zoonotic) disease transmission in developing countries, decision makers generally rely on distribution estimates of animals from survey records or projections of historical enumeration results. Given the high cost of large-scale surveys, the sample size is often restricted and the accuracy of estimates is therefore low, especially when spatial high-resolution is applied. This study explores possibilities of improving the accuracy of livestock distribution maps without additional samples using spatial modelling based on regression tree forest models, developed using subsets of the Uganda 2008 Livestock Census data, and several covariates. The accuracy of these spatial models as well as the accuracy of an ensemble of a spatial model and direct estimate was compared to direct estimates and “true” livestock figures based on the entire dataset. The new approach is shown to effectively increase the livestock estimate accuracy (median relative error decrease of 0.166-0.037 for total sample sizes of 80-1,600 animals, respectively). This outcome suggests that the accuracy levels obtained with direct estimates can indeed be achieved with lower sample sizes and the multimodel approach presented here, indicating a more efficient use of financial resource

Improving the accuracy of livestock distribution estimates through spatial interpolation

Abstract. Animal distribution maps serve many purposes such as estimating transmission risk of zoonotic pathogens to both animals and humans. The reliability and usability of such maps is highly dependent on the quality of the input data. However, decisions on how to perform livestock surveys are often based on previous work without considering possible consequences. A better understanding of the impact of using different sample designs and processing steps on the accuracy of livestock distribution estimates was acquired through iterative experiments using detailed survey. The importance of sample size, sample design and aggregation is demonstrated and spatial interpolation is presented as a potential way to improve cattle number estimates. As expected, results show that an increasing sample size increased the precision of cattle number estimates but these improvements were mainly seen when the initial sample size was relatively low (e.g. a median relative error decrease of 0.04 % per sampled parish for sample sizes below 500 parishes). For higher sample sizes, the added value of further increasing the number of samples declined rapidly (e.g. a median relative error decrease of 0.01 % per sampled parish for sample sizes above 500 parishes. When a two-stage stratified sample design was applied to yield more evenly distributed samples, accuracy levels were higher for low sample densities and stabilised at lower sample sizes compared to one-stage stratified sampling. Aggregating the resulting cattle number estimates yielded significantly more accurate results because of averaging under- and over-estimates (e.g. when aggregating cattle number estimates from subcounty to district level, P <0.009 based on a sample of 2,077 parishes using one-stage stratified samples). During aggregation, area-weighted mea

Brucellosis as an emerging threat in developing economies: lessons from Nigeria

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, has a large proportion of the world’s poor livestock keepers, and is a hotspot for neglected zoonoses. A review of the 127 accessible publications on brucellosis in Nigeria reveals only scant and fragmented evidence on its spatial and temporal distribution in different epidemiological contexts. The few bacteriological studies conducted demonstrate the existence of Brucella abortus in cattle and sheep, but evidence for B. melitensis in small ruminants is dated and unclear. The bulk of the evidence consists of seroprevalence studies, but test standardization and validation are not always adequately described, and misinterpretations exist with regard to sensitivity and/or specificity and ability to identify the infecting Brucella species. Despite this, early studies suggest that although brucellosis was endemic in extensive nomadic systems, seroprevalence was low, and brucellosis was not perceived as a real burden; recent studies, however, may reflect a changing trend. Concerning human brucellosis, no studies have identified the Brucella species and most reports provide only serological evidence of contact with Brucella in the classical risk groups; some suggest brucellosis misdiagnoses as malaria or other febrile conditions. The investigation of a severe outbreak that occurred in the late 1970s describes the emergence of animal and human disease caused by the settling of previously nomadic populations during the Sahelian drought. There appears to be an increasing risk of reemergence of brucellosis in sub-Saharan Africa, as a result of the co-existence of pastoralist movements and the increase of intensive management resulting from growing urbanization and food demand. Highly contagious zoonoses like brucellosis pose a threat with far-reaching social and political consequences

Number of cattle and small ruminant studies which have used the rose Bengal test (RBT), card test (CT), serum agglutination test (SAT), rapid plate test (RPT), 2-mercaptoethanol test (2-ME), rivanol test (RIV), Coombs test, complement fixation test (CFT), milk ring test (MRT), and more recent diagnostic assays such as the competitive ELISA (C-ELISA), indirect ELISA (I-ELISA), and lateral flow assay (LFA) for serological screening.

<p>The data table corresponds to total number of studies that have employed each test for each species. The overall number of studies is greater than the total number of papers retrieved because most papers screened sera with more than one serological assay.</p

Summary of brucellosis RBT studies in cattle in Nigeria.

1<p>Number of studies using RBT on which individual prevalence values in table have been based (see text).</p>2<p>Sum of animal sample size for each study for which individual prevalence data is available.</p>3<p>Number of studies, out of total number of studies, on which individual prevalence is based, which report number of herds sampled.</p>4<p>Minimum estimate or true number of herds sampled for each production system category. Not all studies reported number of herds sampled, hence true value must be superior (>) to that in table.</p>5<p>Number of studies using RBT on which herd prevalence values in table have been based (see text).</p>6<p>Sum of number of herds sampled for each study for which herd prevalence data is available.</p>7<p>Studies sampling extensive and intensive flocks in parallel.</p>8<p>Not applicable.</p

Location of brucellosis studies in Nigeria.

<p>(A) cattle; (B) sheep and goats; (C) camels and pigs; and (D) humans.</p

Wie viel grammatische Variation vertragen DaF-Lernende?

The contribution investigates the question as to what extent grammatical variation should be taken into account in the didactics of German as a foreign language. Relevant factors are foremost the frequency of the specific variation, its cognitive relevance, its acceptability in standard language, and its potential difficulty for foreign learners. On the basis of a corpus of ten didactic grammars, a large range of variational phenomena are discussed: on the word level are considered nominal gender, nominal plural, verbal subjunctive (Konjunktiv II), nominal and verbal inflectional classes; on the phrase level, prepositional government and position; on the clause level, various form of agreement, mainly between subject and predicate/predicative (number, gender, case). It has emerged that didactic grammars often ignore variation. But even if grammars devote attention to variation, they lack adequate explanations and the phenomena included often do not have didactic relevance. In sum, grammars describe variation as isolated cases constituting a factor of disturbance, and not as an intrinsic part of every language, a sociolinguistically complex system in constant diachronic transformation.Der Artikel geht die Frage nach, inwieweit grammatische Variation im DaF-Unterricht Berücksichtigung finden sollte. Auf der Grundlage eines Korpus von zehn weitverbreiteten Übungsgrammatiken wird eine repräsentative Auswahl von grammatischen Phänomenen diskutiert: auf Wortebene Genus, nominaler Plural, Konjunktiv II, nominale und verbale Flexionsklassen; auf Phrasenebene präpositionale Rektion und Stellung; auf Satzebene verschiedenen Formen der Kongruenz, in erster Linie zwischen Subjekt und Prädikat. Variation wird in Übungsgrammatiken weitgehend vernachlässigt und, wenn überhaupt erwähnt, als isolierter Störfaktor dargestellt und nicht als konstitutiver Teil eines komplexen und dynamischen Sprachsystems