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

• Published in: Diseases of Aquatic Organisms
• Main Authors: Foster, Geoff, Nymo, Ingebjorg H, Kovacs, Kit M, Beckmen, Kimberlee B, Brownlow, Andrew, Baily, Johanna, Dagleish, Mark P, Muchowski, Jakub, Perrett, Lorraine L, Tryland, Morten, Lydersen, Christian, Godfroid, Jacques, McGovern, Barry, Whatmore, Adrian M
• Other Authors: The Scottish Agricultural College, The Arctic University of Norway, Norwegian Polar Institute, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), Institute of Aquaculture, The Moredun Research Institute, Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), orcid:0000-0002-2242-7078
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Inter-Research 2018
• Subjects: Antibodies; Bearded seal; Brucella pinnipedialis; Isolation; Multilocus sequence typing; MLST; Arctic; Bering Sea; Bering Strait; Chukchi Sea; Svalbard; bearded seal; Chukchi; Erignathus barbatus
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/26881; https://doi.org/10.3354/dao03211; http://dspace.stir.ac.uk/bitstream/1893/26881/1/Bearded%20seal%20-%20Submission.pdf

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.