Assessing the pathogen landscape in beluga whales: a scoping review protocol

• Main Author: Sudlovenick, Enooyaq
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Open Science Framework 2022
• Subjects: Immunology and Infectious Disease; Other Immunology and Infectious Disease; Life Sciences; Biology; Zoology; FOS Biological sciences; Animal Sciences; beluga; beluga whale; delphinapterus leucas; pathogens; Arctic; Northwest Territories; Hudson Bay; Hudson; Lair; Lockhart; Beluga; Beluga whale; Beluga*; Delphinapterus leucas; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17605/osf.io/7t5ra; https://osf.io/7t5ra/

In the recent years, there have been a number of reports by northern communities of dead beluga washing ashore along the coasts of Alaska, Northwest Territories, and Hudson Bay. With little to no access to these whales and few veterinary or scientific personnel in the Arctic, it has been very rare to obtain samples for any investigation to occur. A number of factors could be responsible for these dead whales, including anthropogenic impact (ship strikes), pollution, environmental changes (SST increases, food chain impacts), or simple predation. Some of these factors have been explored, and efforts are underway to understand beluga health. This includes studies on POPs (Letcher et al., 2010), heavy metals (Loseto et al., 2015; Lockhart et al., 2005), and body condition (MacMillan et al., 2019; Luque et al., 2009). However, there are few studies available in the literature on pathogens dedicated to beluga whales. There are reviews that include beluga whales in the larger review of arctic animals (Jenkins et al., 2013) and cetaceans (Koch et al., 2018; Dubey et al., 2003; Higgins, 2000). Some of the existing literature include antibody surveys (Alekseev et al., 2009; Nielsen et al., 2001) and opportunistic sampling from harvested (Nielsen et al., 2018; ) or beached whales (Lair et al., 2016; Martineau et al., 1988, 2002). But, there remains no detailed knowledge of pathogens documented in beluga whales in the literature. This gap supports the need for current scoping review to systematically map out the literature landscape on pathogens recorded in beluga whales to identify our current state of knowledge and reveal any knowledge gaps.