Anguillid eels are high-value food fish with 16 known species worldwide. Due to its taxonomic ambiguity and insufficient data on species composition, this family of freshwater eels were inadvertently regarded as a single species. This study collected 63 freshwater eels at 3 life stages (glass eel, elver, yellow eel) from Cagayan River, Philippines, to evaluate the accuracy of morphological identification in comparison with molecular analysis. Morphological results displayed clear distinctiveness between Anguilla bicolor and Anguilla marmorata despite some overlapping physical characteristics between Anguilla marmorata and Anguilla luzonensis. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that 15 out of ...

The interest in the use of Philippine native swine (PNS) as a product alternative to the white hybrid has been growing in the Philippines. However, PNS raised in low-cost production systems are prone to infection by zoonotic pathogens, such as the Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) that causes diarrhea and life-threatening complications. The multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains of STEC further aggravate the problem as they serve as reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes. This study aimed to detect the occurrence of MDR STEC in 57 fecal samples of weaning- and market-age PNS. In addition, the class 1 integrons of the MDR STEC were characterized due to their ability to capture ant...

This study was conducted so as to unearth the relationships between opercular girth (Gope), maximum girth (Gmax), and total length (TL) for six sparid fishes (Boops boops, Diplodus annularis, Diplodus puntazzo, Diplodus vulgaris, Lithognathus mormyrus, Oblada melanura) belonging to family Sparidae sampled between April 2015 and July 2016 in Saros Bay (Northern Aegean Sea, Turkey). Gope and Gmax were found to increase linearly with total length for all the species. All r2 values were statistically significant (> 0.82, P < 0.001). This study reports the first information about length-girth relationships (LGRs) of Diplodus puntazzo for the Aegean sea. However, no LGRs estimates existed...

As ubiquitous environmental pollutants, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) can cause significant health risks to various organisms, including humans. Meanwhile, PCBs exhibit various properties such as biological toxicity, high fat solubility, and accumulation in sediments and bioaccumulation in the food chain. In this study, the concentration of PCBs in Zhanjiang offshore sediment and the histopathological changes and the mRNA expression of cytokines in intestines of zebrafish (Danio rerio) exposed to environmentally relevant concentrations of PCBs were investigated. Among the six sites selected, PCB28 was found in the sediments of Lakeside Park (BHP) and Seashore Park (HBP), with concentra...

Spectral reflectance indices have shown potential in crop water stress detection. Spectral reflectance was measured to determine vegetation indices, and its use as an indicator of water stress in corn under different irrigation treatments was explored. A completely randomized experimental design was conducted to detect water stress in potted IPB Var13 corn (Zea mays L.) under screenhouse conditions. Corn plants were subjected to three water stress treatments with three replications during the late vegetative (42 - 60 days after planting (DAP)) and reproductive (55 - 77 DAP) stages based on the total available water (TAW) in the soil: well-watered (> 50% TAW), moderately water-stressed ...