First isolation of Brucella pinnipedialis and detection of Brucella antibodies from bearded seals Erignathus barbartus

Citation

Foster G, Nymo IH, Kovacs KM, Beckmen KB, Brownlow A, Baily J, Dagleish MP, Muchowski J, Perrett LL, Tryland M, Lydersen C, Godfroid J, McGovern B & Whatmore AM (2018) First isolation of Brucella pinnipedialis and detection of Brucella antibodies from bearded seals Erignathus barbartus. Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, 128 (1), pp. 13-20. https://doi.org/10.3354/dao03211

Abstract
Brucella species infecting marine mammals was first reported in 1994 and in the years since has been documented in various species of pinnipeds and cetaceans. While these reports have included species that inhabit Arctic waters, the few available studies on bearded seals Erignathus barbatus have failed to detect Brucella infection to date. We report the first isolation of Brucella pinnipedialis from a bearded seal. The isolate was recovered from the mesenteric lymph node of a bearded seal that stranded in Scotland and typed as ST24, a sequence type associated typically with pinnipeds. Furthermore, serological studies of free-ranging bearded seals in their native waters detected antibodies to Brucella in seals from the Chukchi Sea (1990-2011; 19%) and Svalbard (1995-2007; 8%), whereas no antibodies were detected in bearded seals from the Bering Sea or Bering Strait or from captive bearded seals.

Keywords
Antibodies; Bearded seal; Brucella pinnipedialis; Isolation; Multilocus sequence typing; MLST

Journal
Diseases of Aquatic Organisms: Volume 128, Issue 1