Arctic marine mammals face a multitude of challenges linked to climate change, including increasing anthropogenic noise from ship traffic. The beluga whale ( Delphinapterus leucas ), a predominately Arctic endemic cetacean, relies heavily on acoustic communication, with documented overlap between their vocalizations and hearing range and ship noise. Some belugas migrate through areas with the highest levels of ship traffic in...

Uterine myocytes during pregnancy proceed through a series of adaptations and collectively transform into a powerfully contractile tissue by term. Previous work has indicated that members of the heat shock protein (HSP) B family of stress proteins are associated with the process of adaptation and transformation. Utilizing immunoblot analyses, widefield epifluorescence and total internal reflection (TIRF) microscopy, this study...

The Bering Land Bridge (BLB) last connected Eurasia and North America during the Late Pleistocene. Although the BLB would have enabled transfers of terrestrial biota in both directions, it also acted as an ecological filter whose permeability varied considerably over time. Here we explore the possible impacts of this ecological corridor on genetic diversity within, and connectivity among, populations of a once wide‐ranging gro...

An unusual form of bacterial gill disease (BGD) was identified which affected five species of cultured salmonids from Canada (i.e. rainbow trout, chinook salmon and Atlantic salmon), Norway (i.e. brown trout) and Chile (i.e. coho salmon). All outbreaks occurred at low water temperatures ( Flavobacterium branchiophilum . In contrast to classical BGD, fish did not show marked respiratory distress with flaring of the opercula, th...

Preliminary experiments are described which aimed to identify compounds that could inhibit the attachment of Flavobacterium branchiophilum strains LAB4a and ATCC 35035 to the gills of rainbow trout. Total inhibition was never achieved, regardless of the compound tested. Formalin‐killed or acetone‐killed F. branchiophilum cells retained at least some of their adherent nature, relative to untreated (live) cells. Adherence was re...