Dear Collegues my co-author and I are happy to announce a new publication reporting investigations on a sperm whales' mass stranding occurred in Italy in 2014.
In that event, a pod of 7 specimens stranded alive along the Italian coast of the Central Adriatic Sea: 3 individuals died on the beach after a few hours due to internal damages induced by prolonged recumbency; the remaining 4 whales were refloated after great efforts. All the dead animals were genetically related females; one was pregnant. All the animals were infected by dolphin morbillivirus (DMV) and the pregnant whale was also affected by a severe nephropathy due to a large kidney stone. Other analyses ruled out other possible relevant factors related to weather conditions or human activities. The results of multidisciplinary post-mortem analyses revealed that the 7 sperm whales entered the Adriatic Sea encountering adverse weather conditions and then kept heading northward following the pregnant but sick leader of the pod, thereby reaching the stranding site. DMV infection most likely played a crucial role in impairing the health condition and orientation abilities of the whales. They did not steer back towards deeper waters, but eventually stranded along the Central Adriatic Sea coastline, a real trap for sperm whales. The full paper could be downloaded at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-29966-7 *Citation:* Mazzariol S, Centelleghe C, Cozzi B, Povinelli M, Marcer F, Ferri N, Di Francesco G, Badagliacca P, Profeta F, Olivieri V, Guccione S, Cocumelli C,Terracciano G, Troiano P, Beverelli M, Garibaldi F, Podestà M, Marsili L, Fossi MC, Mattiucci S, Cipriani P, De Nurra D, Zaccaroni A, Rubini S, Berto D, deQuiros YB, Fernandez A, Morell M, Giorda F, Pautasso A, Modesto P, Casalone C, Di Guardo G. Multidisciplinary studies on a sick-leader syndrome-associated massstranding of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) along the Adriatic coast of Italy. Sci Rep. 2018 Aug 1;8(1):11577. All the best Sandro -- Dr. Sandro Mazzariol, DVM, PhD Dipartimento di Biomedicina Comparata e Alimentazione (BCA) Università degli Studi di Padova Cetaceans strandings Emergency Response Team (CERT) AGRIPOLIS - Ed. Museo Viale dell'Università 16 35020 - Legnaro (PD) tel.: +39 049 827 2963 fax: +39 049 827 2973 skype: smazzariol
_______________________________________________ MARMAM mailing list MARMAM@lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/marmam
