Abstract
BackgroundScreening 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.ResultsA 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 %).ConclusionsPhylogenetic 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 materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-016-0795-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Screening Atlantic cetacean populations for Cetacean Morbillivirus (CeMV) is essential to understand the epidemiology of the disease
An integrated approach taking into consideration epidemiological and environmental parameters should provide a better picture of the ecology and evolution of Cetacean Morbillivirus (CeMV) in free-ranging cetaceans [2]
The objective of the present study was to clarify the prevalence of DMV in cetacean populations from the eastern Atlantic, and to investigate the relationship between the dolphin morbillivirus circulating in the eastern Atlantic and elsewhere in the world, especially in the Mediterranean
Summary
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. scarce information is available regarding this disease in cetaceans from the North-East Atlantic populations. Infection has been associated with high mortality rates occurring during disease outbreaks in different parts of the world [4]. The mortality rate in striped dolphins from the Mediterranean Sea in the beginning of the nineties was the highest recorded so far [2, 5, 6]. CeMV includes three well characterized viral strains [7]: porpoise morbillivirus (PMV), dolphin morbillivirus (DMV) and pilot whale morbillivirus (PWMV); three novel cetacean morbillivirus strains were recently reported [8,9,10], adding to the genetic diversity of these viruses
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