Are we even close? Five years marine litter ingestion monitoring in loggerhead turtles along Italian coast reveals how far we are from the Good Environmental Status.

The loggerhead sea turtle Caretta caretta has been chosen as bioindicator to monitor the amount of litter ingested by marine animals within the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the Barcelona Regional Sea Convention. European Member States and Contracting Parties are committed to achieve the Good Environmental Status (GES), which is reached when the quantity of ingested litter does not adversely affect the health of the species concerned. Although the monitoring strategy has been outlined for more than a decade, to date no threshold values have been adopted to verify GES achievement. After five years of extensive monitoring along the Italian coasts, this study evaluates the suitability of five different GES scenarios and proposes a new threshold value (i.e., "there should be less than 33% of sea turtles having more than 0.05 g of ingested plastic in the GI") for its implementation in the European seas and the Mediterranean basin.

Preliminary Results on the Prevalence of Salmonella spp. in Marine Animals Stranded in Sicilian Coasts: Antibiotic Susceptibility Profile and ARGs Detection in the Isolated Strains.

The presence of Salmonella spp. in marine animals is a consequence of contamination from terrestrial sources (human activities and animals). Bacteria present in marine environments, including Salmonella spp., can be antibiotic resistant or harbor resistance genes. In this study, Salmonella spp. detection was performed on 176 marine animals stranded in the Sicilian coasts (south Italy). Antibiotic susceptibility, by disk diffusion method and MIC determination, and antibiotic resistance genes, by molecular methods (PCR) of the Salmonella spp. strains, were evaluated. We isolated Salmonella spp. in three animals, though no pathological signs were detected. Our results showed a low prevalence of Salmonella spp. (1.7%) and a low incidence of phenotypic resistance in three Salmonella spp. strains isolated. Indeed, of the three strains, only Salmonella subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium from S. coeruleoalba and M. mobular showed phenotypic resistance: the first to ampicillin, tetracycline, and sulphamethoxazole, while the latter only to sulphamethoxazole. However, all strains harbored resistance genes (blaTEM, blaOXA, tet(A), tet(D), tet(E), sulI, and sulII). Although the low prevalence of Salmonella spp. found in this study does not represent a relevant health issue, our data contribute to the collection of information on the spread of ARGs, elements involved in antibiotic resistance, now considered a zoonosis in a One Health approach.

Quantification of Some Heavy Metals in Hair of Dairy Cows Housed in Different Areas from Sicily as a Bioindicator of Environmental Exposure-A Preliminary Study.

The objective of this preliminary study was to evaluate the levels of selected heavy metals in hair samples of Holstein dairy cows reared on agricultural soils characterized by grassland subjected to anthropogenic impacts. Ninety Holstein-Friesian cows were enrolled in the study and divided into six groups according to farm origin. From each animal, hair samples were collected in order to determine the content of aluminum, chromium, iron, copper, zinc, arsenic, cadmium, and lead. One-way analysis of variance was applied to assess statistically significant differences in the studied heavy metals among the six groups. A significant effect of groups (p < 0.05) on all tested heavy metals was observed. In this study, the low concentration of heavy metals in the hair of the studied animals led us to think that the cows were subjected to low levels of these compounds, preventing them from bioaccumulating. Although the current study provides only preliminary results, it highlights the importance of investigating the concentration of heavy metals in cow hair to improve the health and welfare of both humans and animals.

The impact of captivity on some haematological parameters of griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus).

Haematological analysis is an essential field of veterinary medicine that provides inexpensive and reliable support to determinate animal health. The knowledge of how different factors affect the normal mean values of blood parameters is key to understand and improve animal health. In order to investigate how captivity can affect the haematological profile of birds of prey, the erythrocyte count, haemoglobin concentration, haematocrit, mean corpuscular volume, total leukocytes count of 123 griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus) were analysed. The birds were divided into 4 groups according to their life conditions: a control group of free-living griffons, 2 semi-captive groups held in an aviary for 15 and 30 days respectively, representing short-term captivity, and a captive group that had lived in cage for about 2 years. Our results showed that long-term captivity could influence haematocrit value and haemoglobin concentration. Furthermore, discriminant analysis highlighted significant separation between the captive birds on one hand and the control group and the semi-captive birds on the other. Instead, short-term captivity did not seem to affect prominently haemocytometric profile.