The use of detection methods are discussed in relation to early rearing practices and disease control strategies. Thermal challenge induced a clear increase in the probability of detecting infected individuals, particularly for groups exhibiting significant prevalence of OsHV-1-contaminated spat prior to the challenge. Quantification of viral DNA before and during the trial showed that infection prevalence and intensity changed over time and revealed latent infection initially unsuspected in 3 of 10 groups. Spat groups collected on oyster beds and hatchery spat reared in growout areas during summer exhibited higher viral DNA contamination and mortalities during the trial than spat kept in onshore rearing facilities. Experiments were conducted on several hundred oyster spat provided by producers in order to examine whether early rearing practices could be considered as potential risk factors for (1) OsHV-1 infection as detected by molecular methods and (2) spat mortality experimentally induced through thermal challenge. And the different oyster families do look and “behave” differently – some grow quickly and some grow slowly, and some survive predators better than others.Early detection of Pacific oyster spat infected with ostreid herpesvirus 1 (OsHV-1) could prevent introduction of OsHV-1-infected individuals into farming areas or onshore rearing facilities, thus reducing the risk of infection of naïve oysters in such production systems. We’re still processing and analyzing the data from Tile 2.0, but it looks like which site is the best depends on what you’re measuring – the best place for survival is not always the best place for growth. Whew – that was pretty mixed bag of metaphors! But you get the idea. Augustine.īy putting out tiles from each family at sites across this same geographic range (FL to NC), we can tell if some sites or regions are inherently better than others for oysters (for instance, as I’m currently learning first-hand, there’s a reason that everyone wants to spend the winter in FL!), or if some families are naturally better than others (think Family Feud with oysters), or if the oysters that came from a particular site do best at that site, but not in other places (like the ‘home field advantage’ that recently helped Maryland beat Duke in basketball). (If you don’t remember and want to check it out, go here.)Įvan and Tanya admiring our work after we deployed the first reef in St. These are the sorts of crazy job skills that don’t go on a standard resume!Īny of you who have been following the blog for a while may remember the craziness of the our first NSF tile experiment (Tile 1.0) in the fall of 2010, which involved collecting lots of juvenile oysters (“spat”) that had recently settled in the field, bringing them back to the lab, and using a dremel to carefully separate that from the shell they settled on. In doing this lots and lots of times, we’ve learned who in the lab has a special knack for placing small drops of marine glue – Zspar (which you can see in the video) – on tiles, and who is better at adding the oysters so that the 2 valves of their shells don’t get glued shut. Our method of choice for this task is to glue the oysters to standardized tiles, place some in cages to protect them from predators, leave the rest to fend for themselves, and then put them in the field and see what happens over time. The hatchery techniques consist of 6 phases of operation. One of the primary goals of several projects in our labs involves figuring out where oysters grow and survive the best, and if they don’t survive, why not? Sounds pretty basic, and it is, but by doing this across lots of sites/environments, we can start to detect general patterns and identify important factors for oyster growth and survival that maybe we didn’t appreciate before. spat collector selection based on the culture method adopted, material availability, economical and. An “open” cage, with full predator access.
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