Search results for "DISEASE"

Phenological and intrinsic predictors of mite and haemacoccidian infection dynamics in a Mediterranean community of lizards

2021

Ectotherms are vulnerable to environmental changes and their parasites are biological health indicators. Thus, parasite load in ectotherms is expected to show a marked phenology. This study investigates temporal host–parasite dynamics in a lizard community in Eastern Spain during an entire annual activity period. The hosts investigated were Acanthodactylus erythrurus, Psammodromus algirus and Psammodromus edwardsianus, three lizard species coexisting in a mixed habitat of forests and dunes, providing a range of body sizes, ecological requirements and life history traits. Habitat and climate were considered as potential environmental predictors of parasite abundance, while size, body conditi…

The intestinal helminth community of the spiny-tailed lizard Darevskia rudis (Squamata, Lacertidae) from northern Turkey

2015

AbstractPopulations of the lizard Darevskia rudis (Bedriaga, 1886) from northern Anatolia were examined for intestinal parasites in adult specimens. One cestode, Nematotaenia tarentolae López-Neyra, 1944 and four nematode species, Spauligodon saxicolae Sharpilo, 1962, Skrjabinelazia hoffmanni Li, 1934, Oswaldocruzia filiformis (Goeze, 1782) and Strongyloides darevskyi Sharpilo, 1976, were found. Three of these nematodes, S. saxicolae, S. hoffmanni and S. darevskyi are suggested to be part of a module in the network of Darevskia spp. and their parasites. Only one, S. darevskyi, was identified as a Darevskia spp. specialist. The very low infection and diversity parameters are indicative of th…

Biotechnological Applications for the Sustainable Use of Marine By-products: In Vitro Antioxidant and Pro-apoptotic Effects of Astaxanthin Extracted …

2019

In this study, the carotenoid astaxanthin was obtained by supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) from shrimp by-products (SBP). Its bioactive properties were evaluated in vitro in human normal and cancerous cells lines. The antioxidant activity of the extracted astaxanthin of the SFE fraction (ASTA) was tested in fibroblast cells (HS-68), by inducing oxidative stress and by evaluating the protective effect of the pre-treatment with different levels of ASTA against toxicity. The anti-proliferative activity was evaluated in hepatoma cells (HEP-G2), treated with increased concentrations of ASTA and measuring the effects on vitality and on some biomolecular markers related to oxidative stress, ce…

Twig and Shoot Dieback of Citrus, a New Disease Caused by Colletotrichum Species

2021

(1) Background: This study was aimed at identifying the Colletotrichum species associated with twig and shoot dieback of citrus, a new syndrome occurring in the Mediterranean region and also reported as emerging in California. (2) Methods: Overall, 119 Colletotrichum isolates were characterized. They were recovered from symptomatic trees of sweet orange, mandarin and mandarin-like fruits during a survey of citrus groves in Albania and Sicily (southern Italy). (3) Results: The isolates were grouped into two distinct morphotypes. The grouping of isolates was supported by phylogenetic sequence analysis of two genetic markers, the internal transcribed spacer regions of rDNA (ITS) and β-tubulin …

Dehydration rate determines the degree of membrane damage and desiccation tolerance in bryophytes.

2016

Desiccation tolerant (DT) organisms are able to withstand an extended loss of body water and rapidly resume metabolism upon rehydration. This ability, however, is strongly dependent on a slow dehydration rate. Fast dehydration affects membrane integrity leading to intracellular solute leakage upon rehydration and thereby impairs metabolism recovery. We test the hypothesis that the increased cell membrane damage and membrane permeability observed under fast dehydration, compared with slow dehydration, is related to an increase in lipid peroxidation. Our results reject this hypothesis because following rehydration lipid peroxidation remains unaltered, a fact that could be due to the high incr…

Kineococcus vitellinus sp. nov., Kineococcus indalonis sp. nov. and Kineococcus siccus sp. nov., isolated nearby the Tabernas desert (Almería, Spain)

2020

This article belongs to the Section Environmental Microbiology.

Assessment of Multilocus Sequence Analysis (MLSA) for Identification of Candidatus Liberibacter Solanacearum from Different Host Plants in Spain

2020

19 Pág.

2016

Several insect taxa are associated with intracellular symbionts that provision limiting nutrients to their hosts. Such tightly integrated symbioses are especially common in insects feeding on nutritionally challenging diets like phloem sap or vertebrate blood, but also occur in seed-eating and omnivorous taxa. Here, we characterize an intracellular symbiosis in pollen-feeding beetles of the genus Dasytes (Coleoptera, Dasytidae). High-throughput tag-encoded 16S amplicon pyrosequencing of adult D. plumbeus and D. virens revealed a single gamma-proteobacterial symbiont that amounts to 52.4-98.7% of the adult beetles’ entire microbial community. Almost complete 16S rRNA sequences phylogenetical…

2021

Environmental heterogeneity is a central component influencing the virulence and epidemiology of infectious diseases. The number and distribution of susceptible hosts determines disease transmission opportunities, shifting the epidemiological threshold between the spread and fadeout of a disease. Similarly, the presence and diversity of other hosts, pathogens and environmental microbes, may inhibit or accelerate an epidemic. This has important applied implications in farming environments, where high numbers of susceptible hosts are maintained in conditions of minimal environmental heterogeneity. We investigated how the quantity and quality of aquaculture enrichments (few vs. many stones; cl…

Benefits of immune protection versus immunopathology costs: a synthesis from cytokine KO models.

2017

5 pages; International audience; The inflammatory response can produce damage to host tissues and in several infectious diseases the most severe symptoms are due to immunopathology rather than a direct effect of pathogen multiplication. One hypothesis for the persistence of inflammatory damage posits that the benefits of protection towards infection outweigh the costs. We used data on knocked-out (KO) cytokine models [and the corresponding wild-type (WT) controls] to test this hypothesis. We computed differences in pathogen load and host survival between WT and KO and divided them by the WT values. Using this ratio provides an internal control for variation in pathogen species, host strain,…