Outbreaks among European brown hares (Lepus europaeus, Pallas) of a fatal disease associated with severe liver damage have occurred in Sweden since the beginning of the 1980s. The disease, called the European brown hare syndrome (EBHS), was recognised in Denmark in 1982 and is today widespread in Denmark and southern Sweden. It has not been reported in Norway or Finland. Two species of hares ar...

With a historical perspective, I reviewed the peer-reviewed scientific literature (and some gray literature, as needed) on European hare (Lepus europaeus) in six countries already invaded by it: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. covered following topics: (a) Introduction, spread, current distribution; (b) Life history, reproduction, population dynamics; (c) Interactions ...

The European brown hare (Lepus europaeus, Pallas 1778) is an important small game species in Europe. Due to its size and position in the food chain, as well as its life history, phenotypic variation and the relatively recent speciation events, brown hare plays an important role in the structure of various ecosystems and has emerged as an important species for population management and evolution...

Mycobacterium bovis infection in wildlife and feral species is a potential source of infection for livestock and a threat to protected and endangered species. The aim of this study was to identify Spanish wild animal species infected with M. bovis through bacteriological culture and spacer oligonucleotide typing (spoligotyping) of isolates for epidemiological purposes. This study included sampl...

In Fennoscandia, mountain hare (Lepus timidus) and brown hare (Lepus europaeus) hybridize and produce fertile offspring, resulting in gene flow across the species barrier. Analyses of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) show that introgression occur frequently, but unavailability of appropriate nuclear DNA markers has made it difficult to evaluate the scale- and significance for the ...

Utilizing the observation that a majority of human atherosclerotic fibrous plaques show monoclonal characteristics, we carried out this study to determine the clonal characteristics of cholesterol-induced atherosclerosis in the hybrid hare. If this is a valid model for human atherosclerosis, the lesions produced in the aorta should be monoclonal. Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G-6-PD) was u...

Endogenous retroviruses, non-retroviral RNA viruses and DNA viruses have been found in the mammalian genomes. The origin of Hepatitis C virus (HCV), the major cause of chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma in humans, remains unclear since its discovery. Here we show that fragments homologous to HCV structural and non-structural (NS) proteins present in the European ra...

Rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) is a lagovirus that can cause fatal hepatitis (rabbit haemorrhagic disease, RHD) with mortality of 80-90% in farmed and wild rabbits. Since 1986, RHDV has caused outbreaks in rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in Europe, but never in European brown hares (Lepus europaeus, EBH). In 2010, a new RHDV-related virus, called RHDV2, emerged in Europe, causing exte...

Natural hybridisation and subsequent introgression mediate the transmission of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from native mountain hares (Lepus timidus) to introduced brown hares (L. europaeus). We investigated mtDNA Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism among 62 Scandinavian mountain hares, 20 brown hares with mountain hare mtDNA and 19 presumed hybrids from 57 localities in Sweden and Norway. A...

In this study, the karyotype, C-heterochromatin blocks, and nucleolar organizer regions (NORs) of four specimens of Lepus europaeus from Turkey were examined. The diploid number of chromosomes (2n), the fundamental number of chromosome arms (FN), and the number of autosomal arms (FNa) were determined as 48, 90, and 86, respectively. All of the chromosomes have been determined to be possessed of...