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Article
Open AccessKeypoint-MoSeq: parsing behavior by linking point tracking to pose dynamics
Keypoint tracking algorithms can flexibly quantify animal movement from videos obtained in a wide variety of settings. However, it remains unclear how to parse continuous keypoint data into discrete actions. T...
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Article
Open AccessSuperAnimal pretrained pose estimation models for behavioral analysis
Quantification of behavior is critical in diverse applications from neuroscience, veterinary medicine to animal conservation. A common key step for behavioral analysis is first extracting relevant keypoints on...
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Article
Open AccessAltered thermal preferences of infected or immune-challenged Aedes aegypti and Aedes japonicus mosquitoes
Temperature is a critical factor sha** physiology, life cycle, and behaviour of ectothermic vector insects, as well as the development and multiplication of pathogens within them. However, the influence of p...
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Article
Open AccessWildCLIP: Scene and Animal Attribute Retrieval from Camera Trap Data with Domain-Adapted Vision-Language Models
Wildlife observation with camera traps has great potential for ethology and ecology, as it gathers data non-invasively in an automated way. However, camera traps produce large amounts of uncurated data, which ...
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Article
Open AccessMulti-animal pose estimation, identification and tracking with DeepLabCut
Estimating the pose of multiple animals is a challenging computer vision problem: frequent interactions cause occlusions and complicate the association of detected keypoints to the correct individuals, as well...
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Article
Open AccessPerspectives in machine learning for wildlife conservation
Inexpensive and accessible sensors are accelerating data acquisition in animal ecology. These technologies hold great potential for large-scale ecological understanding, but are limited by current processing a...
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Article
Open AccessModelling the monthly abundance of Culicoides biting midges in nine European countries using Random Forests machine learning
Culicoides biting midges transmit viruses resulting in disease in ruminants and equids such as bluetongue, Schmallenberg disease and African horse sickness. In the past decades, these diseases have led to importa...
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Article
Using DeepLabCut for 3D markerless pose estimation across species and behaviors
Noninvasive behavioral tracking of animals during experiments is critical to many scientific pursuits. Extracting the poses of animals without using markers is often essential to measuring behavioral effects i...
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Open AccessSpecies diversity, host preference and arbovirus detection of Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) in south-eastern Serbia
Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) is a genus of small biting midges (also known as “no-see ums”) that currently includes 1368 described species. They are proven or suspected vectors for important pathogens af...
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Article
Open AccessMonthly variation in the probability of presence of adult Culicoides populations in nine European countries and the implications for targeted surveillance
Biting midges of the genus Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) are small hematophagous insects responsible for the transmission of bluetongue virus, Schmallenberg virus and African horse sickness virus to wild ...
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Article
DeepLabCut: markerless pose estimation of user-defined body parts with deep learning
Quantifying behavior is crucial for many applications in neuroscience. Videography provides easy methods for the observation and recording of animal behavior in diverse settings, yet extracting particular aspe...
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Article
Open AccessVector competence of pre-alpine Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) for bluetongue virus serotypes 1, 4 and 8
Bluetongue disease, caused by bluetongue virus serotype 8 (BTV-8), appeared for the first time in the northern part of Europe in 2006, and subsequently rapidly spread causing severe economic losses to the farm...
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Article
Open AccessExperimental evaluation of infection, dissemination, and transmission rates for two West Nile virus strains in European Aedes japonicus under a fluctuating temperature regime
West Nile virus (WNV) is continuously spreading in Eastern and Southern Europe. However, the extent of vector competence of Aedes japonicus (Theobald, 1901) is controversial. In this work, we elucidated the dynam...
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Article
Open AccessAssessing the Contamination of Food and the Environment With Taenia and Echinococcus Eggs and Their Zoonotic Transmission
Cystic and alveolar echinococcosis, caused by Echinococcus granulosus sensu lato and E. multilocularis, respectively, and Taenia solium cysticercosis are serious but neglected zoonotic diseases, caused by extra-i...
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Article
Open AccessSpatial and temporal variation in the abundance of Culicoides biting midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) in nine European countries
Biting midges of the genus Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) are vectors of bluetongue virus (BTV), African horse sickness virus and Schmallenberg virus (SBV). Outbreaks of both BTV and SBV have affected larg...
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Article
Differentiation of Toxocara canis and Toxocara cati based on PCR-RFLP analyses of rDNA-ITS and mitochondrial cox1 and nad1 regions
The definitive genetic identification of Toxocara species is currently based on PCR/sequencing. The objectives of the present study were to design and conduct an in silico polymerase chain reaction-restriction fr...
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Article
Open AccessDevelopment of Dirofilaria immitis and Dirofilaria repens in Aedes japonicus and Aedes geniculatus
The mosquito-borne filarial nematodes Dirofilaria immitis and Dirofilaria repens primarily affect dogs but also cats, causing heartworm disease or subcutaneous dirofilariosis, respectively, and both may also caus...
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Article
Open AccessIdentification of phlebotomine sand flies using one MALDI-TOF MS reference database and two mass spectrometer systems
Rapid, accurate and high-throughput identification of vector arthropods is of paramount importance in surveillance programmes that are becoming more common due to the changing geographic occurrence and extent ...
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Article
Open AccessRepellent and insecticidal efficacy of a new combination of fipronil and permethrin against three mosquito species (Aedes albopictus, Aedes aegypti and Culex pipiens) on dogs
Three laboratory studies were conducted to assess the repellent and insecticidal efficacy of a combination of fipronil and permethrin (Frontline Tri- Act®/Frontect®) against three mosquito species (Aedes albopict...
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Article
Open AccessBabesia spp. in European wild ruminant species: parasite diversity and risk factors for infection
Babesia are tick-borne parasites that are increasingly considered as a threat to animal and public health. We aimed to assess the role of European free-ranging wild ruminants as maintenance mammalian hosts for Ba...
