Mercury has contaminated rivers worldwide, with health consequences for aquatic organisms and humans who consume them. Researchers have focused on aquatic birds as sentinels for mercury. However, trophic transfer between adjacent ecosystems could lead to the export of aquatic mercury to terrestrial habitats. Along a mercury-contaminated river in Virginia, United States, terrestrial birds had si...

Beginning in the late 1970s, Kesterson Reservoir was used for disposal of subsurface drainage from agricultural fields in California's San Joaquin Valley. During 1983-1985, studies were conducted to evaluate the effects of chemicals in this agricultural drainwater on aquatic birds using Kesterson Reservoir. These studies included analyses of food-chain biota (such as plants, aquatic invertebrat...

Despite remarkable significance of Pantanal for the conservation of aquatic birds, the status of their populations, the spatiotemporal patterns of distribution and habitat use and structure of communities are little known. Thus, we studied three aquatic environments (Negro river, bays and salines) from 2007 to 2009 in the Nhecolândia Pantanal to verify the distribution and composition of aquati...

Several studies have claimed that reduction in body size comprises a nearly universal response to global warming; however, doubts about the validity of this pattern for endothermic species have been raised recently. Accordingly, we assessed temporal changes in body mass for 27 bird and 17 mammal species, to evaluate if a reduction in body size during the 20th century is a widespread phenomenon ...

The present study aimed at detection and species-level identification of the Malassezia yeasts in domestic animals and aquatic birds by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). Samples were collected using tape strips and swabs from 471 animals including 97 horses, 102 cattle, 105 sheep, 20 camels, 60 dogs, 30 cats, 1 hamster, 1 squirrel, 50 aquatic birds a...

Many aquatic birds use sounds extensively for in-air communication. Regardless of this, we know very little about their hearing abilities. The in-air audiogram of a male adult great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) was determined using psychophysical methods (method of constants). Hearing thresholds were derived using pure tones of five different frequencies. The lowest threshold was at 2 kHz: 1...

The emergence of highly pathogenic (HP) H5 influenza A viruses in Asia and the increase of HP H7 viruses in Europe and the Americas focused greater attention on the ecology of influenza in wild birds. Influenza virus surveillance studies in wild bird populations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia confirmed that wild aquatic birds are the reservoir for all known influenza A viruses. Phylogenetic ...

Introduction Aquatic birds are the main reservoirs of influenza viruses, however pigs represent an essential host in virus ecology as they are susceptible to both avian and human influenza viruses. Circulating zoonotic influenza (A/H7N9, A/H5N1, and A/H3N2v) viruses could mutate into forms easily transmissible from human-to-human and become a public health concern. Georgia is located along rout...