Parasites may have large effects on host population dynamics, marine fisheries and conservation, but a clear elucidation of their impact is limited by a lack of ecosystem-scale experimental data. We conducted a meta-analysis of replicated manipulative fie...

Background Recent focus on earlier detection of pathogen introduction in human and animal populations has led to the development of surveillance systems based on automated monitoring of health data. Real- or near real-time monitoring of pre-diagnostic data requires automated classification of recor...

Conservation management of wild fish may include fish health management in sympatric populations of domesticated fish in aquaculture. We developed a mathematical model for the population dynamics of parasitic sea lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) on domesticated populations of Atlantic salmon (Salmo sa...

Emamectin benzoate has been used to treat sea lice, Lepeophtheirus salmonis, infestations on farmed Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar. Recent evidence suggests a reduction in effectiveness in some locations. A major challenge in the detection of tolerance emergence can be the typically l...

This chapter covers the host range and specificity, morphology, life cycle, physiopathology, parasite-host interactions, role as disease vector and control and prevention (biological control, environmental approach, drug therapy, vaccination and insecticides) of Lepeophtheirus salmonis and Caligus r...

The practice of disease surveillance has shifted in the last two decades towards the introduction of systems capable of early detection of disease. Modern biosurveillance systems explore different sources of pre-diagnostic data, such as patient's chief complaint upon emergency visit or labo...

In New Brunswick, Canada, the sea louse, Lepeophtheirus salmonis, poses an on-going management challenge to the health and productivity of commercially cultured Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar. While the in-feed medication, emamectin benzoate has been highly effective for many years, evidence of increa...

Sea lice, Lepeophtheirus salmonis, are ectoparasites of farmed and wild salmonids. Infestations can result in significant morbidity and mortality of hosts in addition to being costly to control. Integrated pest management programmes have been developed to manage infestations, and in some salmon ...

Sea lice audits were performed by the Atlantic Veterinary College on commercial aquaculture sites in New Brunswick, Canada, in 2011. Although the primary objective was to verify that farms were reporting similar lice counts to third-party counts, more detailed comparisons were made to identify w...

The salmon louse Lepeophtheirus salmonis is the most important ectoparasite of farmed salmonids in the Northern hemisphere, having a major economic and ecological impact on the sustainability of this sector of the aquaculture industry. To a large extent, control of L. salmonis reli...

Emamectin benzoate (an avermectin chemotherapeutant administered to fish as an in-feed treatment) has been used to treat infestations of sea lice Lepeophtheirus salmonis on farmed Atlantic salmon Salmo salar in the Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick, Canada, since 1999. This retrospective...

Global climate change is predicted to lead to an increase in infectious disease outbreaks. Reliable surveillance for diseases that are most likely to emerge is required, and given limited resources, policy decision makers need rational methods with which to prioritise pathogen threats. Here expe...

Increasing incidences of emerging and re-emerging diseases that are mostly zoonotic (e.g. severe acute respiratory syndrome, avian influenza H5N1, pandemic influenza) has led to the need for a multidisciplinary approach to tackling these threats to public and animal health. Accordingly, a global...

Background: Diagnosis is key to control and prevention of livestock diseases. In areas of sub-Saharan Africa where private practitioners rarely replace Government veterinary services reduced in effectiveness by structural adjustment programmes, those who remain lack resources for diagnosis and m...

Major mastitis pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus agalactiae, Streptococcus uberis, Streptococcus dysgalactiae, and the coliforms are usually considered more virulent and damaging to the udder than minor mastitis pathogens such as Corynebacterium bo...

Resistance development to parasiticides has been a problem in both terrestrial and aquatic environments. A major challenge exists in early detection of resistance emergence due to the low frequency at which resistant organisms can occur initially within a population and the difficulty in detecting t...

There is limited scientific information on relationships among smallholder dairy group membership duration, sustainable livelihoods, food and nutrition security in developing countries, and whether nutrition education of women dairy farmers enhances the nutritional benefits of being a dairy group me...

Infestation patterns of the sea louse Lepeophtheirus salmonis from 44 salmon farms in the Hardangerfjord on the south-west coast of Norway over the period 2004 to 2007 were assimilated to create 20-month production cycle profiles for spring and autumn stocked generations. The timing and frequency of...

The development and implementation of systems for real-time monitoring of health data has been limited in veterinary medicine by the lack of computerized, automatically collected data. We describe the construction of a surveillance system for early detection of cattle diseases based on laboratory re...

This communication briefly reviews some of the factors which have shaped the current protocols for lice counting on salmon farms and points out that the motivation for counting is not always the same. It is also apparent that a number of widely accepted assumptions, such as those relating to presume...

This paper reviews recent progress in the development of syndromic surveillance systems for veterinary medicine. Peer-reviewed and grey literature were searched in order to identify surveillance systems that explicitly address outbreak detection based on systematic monitoring of animal population da...

The Kitasoo/Xai'xais First Nation established a program to monitor sea lice levels on seaward migrating wild juvenile salmon in their traditional territory which contains the most northerly salmon farming region of British Columbia. A total of 12 locations were routinely sampled during the period be...

To secure the safety of international trade of animal and their derived products, it is required that animals should be proven infection-free using a validated diagnostic test certified by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). Test validation involves a multi-step evaluation process to as...