Adjusting worm egg counts for faecal moisture in sheep.

The number of eggs from gastrointestinal nematodes per gram of faeces (worm egg count WEC) is commonly used to determine the need for anti-parasite treatments and the breeding value of animals when selecting for worm resistance. Diarrhoea increases faecal moisture and may dilute the number of worm eggs observed. To quantify this effect, egg counts in sheep at pasture were simulated by dosing 15 animals with chromic oxide particles. The simulated WEC diminished as faecal moisture increased. When faeces were dried, simulated WEC per unit dry matter was not influenced by the amount of faecal moisture present prior to drying. The results suggest that adjustment for faecal moisture may provide an improved estimate of FEC. Drying faeces to calculate the WEC per unit dry matter would provide such an adjustment but may not be practical for industry application. In the past, the CSIRO McMaster Laboratory has used an adjustment factor developed by Gordon based on the classification of faecal consistency derived from the morphology of faeces. To examine the utility of an adjustment factor based on faecal consistency score (FCS), the relationships between FCS and simulated WEC and dry matter were examined. Dry matter and simulated WEC exhibited an exponential decline as FCS increased. The relationship between FCS and dry matter was further examined in 368 samples collected over 12 months from sheep at pasture, where it was observed that dry matter showed a linear decline as FCS increased. Adjustment factors based on dry matter were similar to those proposed by Gordon however adjustment factors predicted from simulated WEC diverged from the remainder for FCS>4. As no samples scored FCS 5 in the study of simulated FEC, the adjustment factors based on the larger study that included samples with FCS 5 was therefore considered more robust. Adjustment factors were given by the equation: WEC(estimated)=(WEC(observed)/(34.21-5.15 FCS))x29.06. This equation estimates for samples with FCS>1 the WEC that would be expected if the samples were FCS 1, the faecal consistency score for normal faeces. The impact of adjustment of observed WEC for faecal moisture predicted by FCS on decision points for treatment and on estimated breeding values requires further examination.

Some relationships between age, immune responsiveness and resistance to parasites in ruminants.

In the Australian livestock industries, susceptibility to infectious diseases is generally greater in young than in mature ruminants. The increased susceptibility is manifest as respiratory and intestinal infections (viral and bacterial) of calves, as well as fleece rot, flystrike and, especially, gastrointestinal parasitic infestations of young sheep. Lower resistance to infectious disease in young ruminants appears to be due largely to immunological hyporesponsiveness, and is not simply a consequence of their not having been exposed sufficiently to pathogens to develop active immunity. Young sheep have significantly lower proportions of CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocytes, but similar proportions of T19+ and B lymphocytes in blood, lymph and skin compared with mature sheep. Blood lymphocytes from young sheep produce less interferon-gamma in culture and young sheep invariably mount smaller antibody responses than do mature animals. Taken together, these findings begin to explain why young ruminants are more susceptible to infectious diseases in general, and to gastrointestinal parasites in particular, when compared to mature animals. Haematological markers of disease resistance, the prevalence of non-selected diseases and immune responses to vaccination were examined in the internal parasite-resistance flocks in Armidale NSW and the fleece rot/flystrike selection flocks at Trangie NSW. Any programme that seeks to improve resistance to parasitic or any other disease should have the capacity to make contemporary measurements of resistance to other diseases which are important in, or threaten, the production system.

The value of circulating eosinophil count as a selection criteria for resistance of sheep to trichostrongyle parasites.

In merino sheep bred for either increased or decreased resistance to Haemonchus contortus, faecal worm egg counts (FEC) were lower in the resistant line (6,831 vs 17,645 epg, P < 0.01), and circulating eosinophils (EOS) were higher, but not significantly so (3.40 x 10(4) ml(-1) vs 1.40 x 10(4) ml(-1), P = 0.1 1). Another flock was artificially infected with Trichostrongylus colubriformis and significant genetic variation was found in both FEC (heritability 0.40 +/- 0.11) and EOS (0.19 +/- 0.08). In a third flock comprising tropical sheep breeds, a natural challenge with T. colubriformis resulted in significant sire effects on FEC (heritability 0.20 +/- 0.10) but not EOS (heritability inestimable). We conclude that EOS offers no advantage over FEC as it selection criterion for resistance.

Speech intonation and focus location in matched statements and questions.

An acoustical study of speech production was conducted to determine the manner in which the location of linguistic focus influences intonational attributes of duration and fundamental voice frequency (F0) in matched statements and questions. Speakers orally read sentences that were preceded by aurally presented stimuli designed to elicit either no focus or focus on the first or last noun phrase of the target sentences. Computer-aided acoustical analysis of word durations showed a localized, large magnitude increase in the duration of the focused word for both statements and questions. Analysis of F0 revealed a more complex pattern of results, with the shape of the F0 topline dependent on sentence type and focus location. For sentences with neutral or sentence-final focus, the difference in the F0 topline between questions and statements was evident only on the last key word, where the F0 peak of questions was considerably higher than that of statements. For sentences with focus on the first key word, there was no difference in peak F0 on the focused item itself, but the F0 toplines of questions and statements diverged quite dramatically following the initial word. The statement contour dropped to a low F0 value for the remainder of the sentence, whereas the question remained quite high in F0 for all subsequent words. In addition, the F0 contour on the focused word was rising in questions and falling in statements, regardless of focus location. The results provide a basis for work on the perception of linguistic focus.

Acoustical aspects of contrastive stress in question-answer contexts.

A series of experiments was conducted to examine the influence of contrastive stress on intonational patterns of duration and fundamental voice frequency (F0). In a preliminary study, intonational patterns in spontaneous speech were compared with the patterns in oral reading of the transcribed spontaneous material. In both circumstances, a general declination of F0 peaks throughout the course of a sentence was not regularly observed, contrary to earlier findings with oral reading of isolated sentences. Two experiments were then conducted to examine the possibility that the general absence of declination observed here might be due to the influence of sentence focus, following previous results from Swedish showing that declination was not observed consistently in isolated sentences until after the site of focus. In experiment 1, we found no evidence of this restriction on declination in the oral reading of English declaratives. Declination was observed both before and after the focused item in a sentence. Furthermore, our analyses revealed that focus (as manifested by contrastive stress) is generally accompanied by an increase in duration on the focused word and by a sharp drop in F0 following the focused item. In experiment 2, these effects were replicated and extended using longer sentences. In both experiments, the influence of focus was strictly localized to the site of focus in the case of duration, but not F0. The results for both duration and F0 indicate that the influence of focus assignment on these attributes varies systematically as a function of the focus location in the sentence. Finally, the combined elongation effects for focus and utterance-final lengthening were less than would be predicted by an additive model, suggesting the operation of an expandability constraint on segmental lengthening in speech production.