The earless seals, phocids or true seals are one of the three main groups of mammals within the seal lineage, Pinnipedia. All true seals are members of the family Phocidae. They are sometimes called crawling seals to distinguish them from the fur seals and sea lions of the family Otariidae. Seals live in the oceans of both hemispheres and, with the exception of the more tropical monk seals, are mostly confined to polar, subpolar, and temperate climates. The Baikal seal is the only species of exclusively freshwater seal.
Marine mammals are aquatic mammals that rely on the ocean and other marine ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as seals, whales, manatees, sea otters and polar bears. They are an informal group, unified only by their reliance on marine environments for feeding and survival.
Canine distemper virus (CDV) is a viral disease that affects a wide variety of mammal families, including domestic and wild species of dogs, coyotes, foxes, pandas, wolves, ferrets, skunks, raccoons, and felines, as well as pinnipeds, some primates, and a variety of other species. CDV does not affect humans.
Paramyxoviridae is a family of negative-strand RNA viruses in the order Mononegavirales. Vertebrates serve as natural hosts. Diseases associated with this family include measles, mumps, and respiratory tract infections. The family has four subfamilies, 17 genera, and 78 species, three genera of which are unassigned to a subfamily.
Morbillivirus is a genus of viruses in the order Mononegavirales, in the family Paramyxoviridae. Humans, dogs, cats, cattle, seals, and cetaceans serve as natural hosts. This genus includes seven species. Diseases in humans associated with viruses classified in this genus include measles; in animals, they include acute febrile respiratory tract infection. In 2013, a wave of increased death among the Common bottlenose dolphin population was attributed to morbillivirus.
The harbour porpoise is one of eight extant species of porpoise. It is one of the smallest species of cetacean. As its name implies, it stays close to coastal areas or river estuaries, and as such, is the most familiar porpoise to whale watchers. This porpoise often ventures up rivers, and has been seen hundreds of kilometres from the sea. The harbour porpoise may be polytypic, with geographically distinct populations representing distinct races: P. p. phocoena in the North Atlantic and West Africa, P. p. relicta in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, an unnamed population in the northwestern Pacific and P. p. vomerina in the northeastern Pacific.
The striped dolphin is an extensively studied dolphin found in temperate and tropical waters of all the world's oceans. It is a member of the oceanic dolphin family, Delphinidae.
The harp seal, also known as Saddleback Seal or Greenland Seal, is a species of earless seal, or true seal, native to the northernmost Atlantic Ocean and Arctic Ocean. Originally in the genus Phoca with a number of other species, it was reclassified into the monotypic genus Pagophilus in 1844. In Greek, its scientific name translates to "ice-lover from Greenland," and its taxonomic synonym, Phoca groenlandica translates to "Greenlandic seal." This is the only species in the genus Pagophilus.
The Caspian seal is one of the smallest members of the earless seal family and unique in that it is found exclusively in the brackish Caspian Sea. It lives along the shorelines, but also on the many rocky islands and floating blocks of ice that dot the Caspian Sea. In winter and cooler parts of the spring and autumn season, it populates the northern Caspian coastline. As the ice melts in the summer and warmer parts of the spring and autumn season, it also occurs in the deltas of the Volga and Ural Rivers, as well as the southern latitudes of the Caspian where the water is cooler due to greater depth.
PDV, PdV or pdv may refer to:
Infectious salmon anemia (ISA) is a viral disease of Atlantic salmon caused by Salmon isavirus. It affects fish farms in Canada, Norway, Scotland and Chile, causing severe losses to infected farms. ISA has been a World Organisation for Animal Health notifiable disease since 1990. In the EU, it is classified as a non-exotic disease, and is monitored by the European Community Reference Laboratory for Fish Diseases.
Ovine rinderpest, also commonly known as peste des petits ruminants (PPR), is a contagious disease primarily affecting goats and sheep; however, camels and wild small ruminants can also be affected. PPR is currently present in North, Central, West and East Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. It is caused by small ruminants morbillivirus in the genus Morbillivirus, and is closely related to, among others, rinderpest morbillivirus, measles morbillivirus, and canine morbillivirus. The disease is highly contagious, and can have an 80–100% mortality rate in acute cases in an epizootic setting. The virus does not infect humans.
Veterinary virology is the study of viruses in non-human animals. It is an important branch of veterinary medicine.
Animal viruses are viruses that infect animals. Viruses infect all cellular life and although viruses infect every animal, plant, fungus and protist species, each has its own specific range of viruses that often infect only that species.
Aleutian disease, also known as mink plasmacytosis, is a disease which causes spontaneous abortion and death in minks and ferrets. It is caused by Carnivore amdoparvovirus 1, a highly contagious parvovirus in the genus Amdoparvovirus. The virus has been found as a natural infection in the Mustelidae family within mink, ferrets, otters, polecats, stone and pine martens and within other carnivores such as skunks, genets, foxes and raccoons. This is most commonly explained as because they all share resources and habitats.
The harborseal, also known as the common seal, is a true seal found along temperate and Arctic marine coastlines of the Northern Hemisphere. The most widely distributed species of pinniped, they are found in coastal waters of the northern Atlantic, Pacific Oceans, Baltic and North Seas.
The species Taï Forest ebolavirus is a virological taxon included in the genus Ebolavirus, family Filoviridae, order Mononegavirales. The species has a single virus member, Taï Forest virus (TAFV). The members of the species are called Taï Forest ebolaviruses.
Dobrava-Belgrade orthohantavirus (DOBV), also known as Dobrava virus, is an enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA virus species of Old World Orthohantavirus. It is one of several species of Hantavirus that is the causative agent of severe Hantavirus hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome. It was first isolated in 1985 from a yellow-necked mouse found in the village of Dobrava, southeastern Slovenia. It was subsequently isolated in striped field mice in Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe. It has also been found in Germany but the reservoir host there is unknown.
Cetaceans form an infra-order of marine mammals. In 2020, approximately 86 species of cetaceans had been identified worldwide. Among these species, at least 35 have been sighted in the wider Caribbean region with very widespread distribution and density variations between areas. Caribbean waters are a preferred breeding site for several species of mysticeti, who live further north the rest of the year. The tucuxi and the boto live at the southern periphery of the Caribbean region in the freshwaters of the Amazon river and surrounding drainage basins.
Ailsa Jane Hall is a British researcher who is Director of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews. Her research considers the impact of contaminants on the risk of mortality in marine mammals.
