New insight into dolphin morbillivirus phylogeny and epidemiology in the northeast Atlantic: opportunistic study in cetaceans stranded along the Portuguese and Galician coasts

Abstract

Background

Screening Atlantic cetacean populations for Cetacean Morbillivirus (CeMV) is essential to understand the epidemiology of the disease. In Europe, Portugal and Spain have the highest cetacean stranding rates, mostly due to the vast extension of coastline. Morbillivirus infection has been associated with high morbidity and mortality in cetaceans, especially in outbreaks reported in the Mediterranean Sea. However, scarce information is available regarding this disease in cetaceans from the North-East Atlantic populations. The presence of CeMV genomic RNA was investigated by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR in samples from 279 specimens stranded along the Portuguese and Galician coastlines collected between 2004 and 2015.

Results

A total of sixteen animals ( n = 16/279, 5.7 %) were positive. The highest prevalence of DMV was registered in striped dolphins ( Stenella coeruleoalba) ( n = 14/69; 20.3 %), slightly higher in those collected in Galicia ( n = 8/33; 24.2 %) than in Portugal ( n = 6/36; 16.7 %).

Conclusions

Phylogenetic analysis revealed that, despite the low genetic distances between samples, the high posterior probability (PP) values obtained strongly support the separation of the Portuguese and Galician sequences in an independent branch, separately from samples from the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands. Furthermore, evidence suggests an endemic rather than an epidemic situation in the striped dolphin populations from Portugal and Galicia, since no outbreaks have been detected and positive samples have been detected annually since 2007, indicating that this virus is actively circulating in these populations and reaching prevalence values as high as 24 % among the Galician samples tested.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-016-0795-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Contributors

Maria Carolina Rocha de Medeiros Bento: ([phone] , [e-mail]

Catarina Isabel Costa Simões Eira: [e-mail]

José Vitor Vingada: [e-mail]

Ana Luisa Marçalo: [e-mail]

Marisa Cláudia Teixeira Ferreira: [e-mail]

Alfredo Lopez Fernandez: [e-mail]

Luís Manuel Morgado Tavares: [e-mail]

Ana Isabel Simões Pereira Duarte: [e-mail]

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Vet Res

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Vet. Res

Title: BMC Veterinary Research

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1746-6148

Publication date (Electronic): 26 August 2016

Publication date PMC-release: 26 August 2016

Publication date Collection: 2016

Volume: 12

Issue: 1

Affiliations

[1 ]Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Animal Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Lisbon, 1300-477 Lisbon, Portugal

[2 ]Department of Biology and CESAM, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal

[3 ]Portuguese Wildlife Society, Department of Biology, Minho University, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal

[4 ]Department of Biology and CESAM, Minho University, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal

[5 ]Department of Biology and CBMA, Minho University, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal

[6 ]Coordinadora para o Estudo dos Mamíferos Mariños, 36380 Gondomar, Pontevedra Spain

Article

Publisher ID: 795

DOI: 10.1186/s12917-016-0795-4

PMC ID: 5002201

PubMed ID: 27566667

Copyright statement: © The Author(s). 2016

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Funding

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001871, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia;

Award ID: CetSenti RECI/AAG-GLO/0470/2012

Award ID: UID/AMB/50017/2013

Award ID: SFRH/BD/30240/2006

Award ID: SFRH/BPD/82407/2011

Award ID: SFRH/BPD/64889/2009

Award Recipient : Catarina Isabel Costa Simões Eira Ana Luisa Marçalo Marisa Cláudia Teixeira Ferreira Alfredo Lopez Fernandez

Funded by: Life+ Marpro

Award ID: Life09 NAT/PT/000038

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100007048, EEA Grants;

Award ID: PT0039

Categories

Subject: Research Article

Custom metadata

issue-copyright-statement © The Author(s) 2016