Giant freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii (de Man), is an important commercial species with considerable export value, ideal for cultivation under low saline conditions and in freshwater zones (Kurup 1994). However, despite more than a decade of research on its larval production systems, vibriosis still hampers seed production resulting in high mortality rates. Among the different speci...

Nematodes of the genera Anisakis and Pseudoterranova (family Anisakidae) are zoonotic parasites for which marine mammals (e.g., whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, sea lions, walruses) act as final hosts, and crustaceans, cephalopods and fish as intermediate and/or paratenic hosts. In humans, the ingestion of Anisakidae larvae can result in infection with live larvae, an allergic reaction to An...

To assess the salt tolerance of the malaria vector Anopheles farauti sensu stricto, larvae were collected from a freshwater environment on the outskirts of Honiara, Solomon Islands and placed in trays containing water with salinity varying from freshwater to seawater. Dead larvae and pupae and emerged adults were recorded and preserved. Most adults and nearly half of the larvae and pupae were t...

In experiments in which guinea pigs were infected concurrently with the virus of lymphocytic choriomeningitis and the parasitic nematode, Trichinella spiralis, proof was obtained that trichinella larvae, after maturation in the muscles, had acquired the virus and were capable of transmitting it to new susceptible hosts. Transmission resulted both when living larvae were fed to normal guinea pig...

It is well established that reproduction is sensitive to the state of energy reserves, and that there is a balance between energy homeostasis and fertility. In this view, this study examined the effects of different diets on growth and reproductive performance of fresh water angelfish. Twenty four pairs of angelfish (weighing 3.58 ± 0.24 g) were fed with four types of diets including live earth...

Turbot larvae were challenged with eight strains of Vibrio splendidus isolated from diseased larvae, plus a ninth strain pathogenic to scallop larvae (A515; Nicolas et al. 1996). Six strains caused heavy mortality but the scallop pathogen and the other two strains did not. All the strains shared a large number of phenotypic traits, and an attempt was made to relate virulence to genotype and phe...

Distinct partitioning has been observed in the composition and diversity of bacterial communities inhabiting the surface and overlying seawater of three coral species infected with black band disease (BBD) on the southern Caribbean island of Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles. PCR amplification and sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes (rDNA) with universally conserved primers have identified over ...

Up to now the visual inspection of mobility of isolated anisakid larvae serves as a measure of viability and possible risk of infection. This paper presents a new method to rule out unreliability - caused by the temporary immobility of the larvae and by the human uncertainty factor of visual observation. By means of a Near infrared (NIR) imaging method, elastic curvature energies and geometric ...

Insects protect themselves from majority of infections by a non-specific innate immune system (present in both vertebrates and invertebrates). Bombyx mori nuclear polyhedrosis virus (BmNPV), a baculovirus, causing the deadly grasserie disease is a scourge to silkworm industry and we report here the first success in combating this disease with the help of a nanosilica-virus complex. Hydrophobic ...