A protocol using flux chambers was employed to determine ammonia emission rates from different low level area sources (LLAS) including free stalls, open lots, manure composting areas, lagoons and separated solids in a central Texas dairy. Data including ammonia emissions from these sources were collected for summer and winter seasons of 2003. Ammonia concentration measurements were made using c...

The distribution of tetracycline resistance in commensal E. coli strains, isolated from pigs at different stages of production system was investigated in four Bulgarian swine farms. The prevalence of antibiotic resistance and particularly tetracycline resistance, as well as two tetracycline resistance genes were evaluated in Escherichia coli isolates from swine faeces and manure lagoons. A tota...

Transitional waters (TWs), such as coastal lagoons, are bodies of surface water at the transition between saline and freshwater domains. These environments play a vital role in guaranteeing ecosystem services, including provision food, protection against meteorological events, anthropogenic carbon sinks, filtering pollutants. Due to escalating overpopulation characterising coastlines worldwide,...

The survival of many organisms depends on interspecific, mutualistic interactions. Hence, it is important to assess the phylogeography of multiple mutualistic species simultaneously to gain insight into how their metapopulations persist, spread and recover from disturbance. Consequently, we sequenced mitochondrial DNA (cytochrome b) from a gobiid fish (Ctenogobiops feroculus) and its mutualisti...

Lagoons have been traditionally used in India for decentralized treatment of domestic sewage. These are cost effective as they depend mainly on natural processes without any external energy inputs. This study focuses on the treatment efficiency of algae-based sewage treatment plant (STP) of 67.65 million liters per day (MLD) capacity considering the characteristics of domestic wastewater (sewag...

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is highly disseminated among swine herds worldwide. HEV is also a threat to public health, since particularly genotypes 3 and 4 may cause acute hepatitis in human beings. No previous studies were done on the occurrence of HEV in environmental samples in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. In the present study, reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was employed ...

Attention is drawn to the effects of parasites on their hosts, taking as a model the digenean parasites of teleosts (hereafter: fish) from lagoons along the French Mediterranean coast. Because digeneans have a heteroxenic life cycle, their impact is not limited to the definitive host, which harbours the sexual adults, but is extended to the first host (mollusc) and to the second host ("inverteb...

Estrogenic activity of regional water samples was evaluated. Samples obtained from wetlands and ponds involved in various agricultural land uses, from three river sites over four seasons, and from municipal wastewater effluent held in storage lagoons were evaluated. The estrogen-responsive cell line MCF-7 BOS was used in the E-screen assay to determine 17beta-estradiol equivalents (E2 Eq) of wa...

The analysis of benthic assemblages is a valuable tool to describe the ecological status of transitional water ecosystems, but species are extremely sensitive and respond to both microhabitat and seasonal differences. The identification of changes in the composition of the macrobenthic community in specific microhabitats can then be used as an "early warning" for environmental changes which may...

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is a marine foundation species essential for coastal ecosystem services around the northern hemisphere. Like all macroscopic organisms, it possesses a microbiome (here defined as an associated prokaryotic community) which may play critical roles in modulating the interaction of eelgrass with its environment. For example, its leaf surface microbiome could inhibit or att...