Intestinal histological alterations in farmed red-bellied pacu Piaractus brachypomus (Characiformes: Serrasalmidae) heavily infected by roundworms

The farmed red-bellied pacu Piaractus brachypomus is a valuative commercial fish widely exploited in fish farming. Histopathologic alterations in small intestine of this fish were associated with heavy roundworms infection. Of a total of thirty-five fish examined, all were parasitized with a prevalence of 100%, intensity of 290–6403, and mean intensity of infection of 4467.5 parasites per fish. According to the morphological features of whole nematodes examined using light and electronic microscopy, the parasite was identified as Rondonia rondoni Travassos. Rev Vet e Zoot 10, 59–70; 1920. The fish intestinal tissue alterations include fusion of villi, edema, disorganization of epithelial cells, epithelial abrasion, and flaking of the villus at mucosa layer level and submucosa layer with some regions of necrosis and lymphocyte infiltrate. This is the first report of histopathological alterations caused by infection of the atractid nematode R. rondoni in a farmed population of P. brachypomus in the Peruvian Amazon. The study points out the need of improving the strategies of parasitic prevention and control in order to better prevent future disease outbreaks.

     

Bacterial precipitation of calcium carbonate in presence of phosphate

The formation of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) crystals under different concentrations of K₂HPO₄ have been determined in 90 bacterial strains isolated from soil. Crystal formation decreased when PO^3?₄ ion concentration increased (in culture media) and precipitation was completely inhibited at 1.4 g I^?1 of K₂HPO₄.     

Estimation of the uncertainty in crop loss predictions through statistical modelling of the AOT40 levels for ozone

Ozone critical levels in Europe are defined in terms of an accumulated exposure over a threshold of 40 ppb, AOT40. For agricultural crops, for example, the critical level is an AOT40 of 5300 ppb.h during daylight in May to July in the year with the highest cumulative exposure in the last five years. In a region of the size of the UK, however, the worst case year is not the same over the whole region and maps become difficult to interpret. Prediction of crop losses on the basis of a single year out of five also wastes potentially valuable information. An alternative approach estimates the distribution of aggregate exceedances over a threshold by means of a compound Poisson model for episodes of raised ozone concentration with linear modelling techniques used to allow direct incorporation of covariate information. The use of spatial and environmental covariates, along with temporal and spatially correlated random effects, is explored using data from the UK ozone monitoring network. The model produces results similar to those from other mapping methods. By combining this model with a crop loss relationship, crop losses of 5–15% for the UK are predicted but the errors range between 2% and 6% indicating that fine detail in crop loss mapping is unlikely to be very accurate.     

Maximum Influent Salinity Affects the Diversity of Mineral-Precipitation-Mediating Bacterial Communities in Membrane Biofilm of Hybrid Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor-Membrane Bioreactor

Water, Air, & Soil Pollution - A novel bacterium, Bacillus megaterium strain ISO-2, capable of the degradation of bisphenol A (BPA), was isolated from wastewater collected from a polycarbonate...