Abstract

Among the different subjects that encompass the biological study of particular species, diseases and health play a key role. Health, epidemiology, and pathology, among other disciplines, can help us understand the condition of a population, which is relevant to almost any study. Despite the evident and growing interest in studying the health and diseases of the different taxonomic groups of "aquatic mammals" there is still a lot of uncertainty when attempting to understand patterns of emerging diseases and trends in population health, and not all taxonomic groups are equally represented in these efforts. In order to examine trends in research topics and discuss potential aspects that limit the advancement of our knowledge on marine mammal health, a literature search was conducted of all indexed and refereed publications listed in the PubMed repository (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) during the last five years. For each taxonomic group of aquatic mammals, namely Pinnipeds, Cetaceans, Sirenia, otters and polar bear, six standardized searches were run to include the following key words: health, disease, pathology, epidemiology, stranding and anesthesia. Most studies have been conducted in pinnipeds (1396 publications between December 31, 2007 and January 1, 2013) followed by otters (322) and cetaceans (238). Polar bears and sirenians are the least studied for these subject areas, with 104 and 83 publications, respectively.

A second search was conducted for all the groups and pathogen types in order to discover trends in studies on particular infectious diseases or pathogens. These searches show that research on bacteria are by far the most common for aquatic mammals (107 publications between December 31, 2007 and January 1, 2013) followed by research on viruses (87), parasites (64) and fungi (32). The number of studies for these pathogens varied among each marine mammal group. In pinnipeds and sirenia, the pathogen that was over-represented was morbillivirus, while in cetaceans Brucella had the highest number of publications; Toxoplasma gondii was the most studied pathogen for otters and polar bear studies focused mainly on Brucella and Clostridium. The trends observed evidence that there remains much to investigate in the fields of aquatic mammal health, particularly as the study effort has not been equal for all species within each taxonomic group. More effort is needed if we wish to truly know the health of our planet's aquatic animals.

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