Refining approaches to measuring, monitoring and appraising animal welfare in aquaculture research is key to (i) protecting and optimizing it, (ii) documenting the severity of how and when it deviates, and (iii) ensuring good scientific quality, reliable results and reproducibility, amongst other factors. However, different fish species and life stages can have varying welfare needs and assessing their welfare can be challengi...

Parasites are ubiquitous in wildlife and can influence health and fitness. Thus, the inclusion of parasites in wildlife monitoring programs could provide important information for understanding declines in population body condition or recruitment rates. However, parasites are often neglected as a factor in wildlife management. We characterised the gastrointestinal parasite community of moose ( Alces alces ) in central Norway o...

Triploid fish are usually sterile, a trait which reduces unwanted sexual maturation in fish farming and eliminates the risk for negative genetic effects of escapees on wild stocks. The triploid state, normally established through a doubling of the maternal genome, consists of two chromosome sets from the mother and one from the father. The increase in genome size is accompanied by an increase in cell volume and reduction in ce...

Forest management plans (FMP) are key decision-support tools for forest managers and a central policy instrument in many countries. Despite its pivotal importance in forest management, there is a lack of studies that analyze the acquisition, familiarity and implementation of the FMP. These steps collectively contribute to making FMP a successful decision-support tool and forest policy instrument. We surveyed a sample represent...

With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the United States. For our first annual survey, we compiled data across all 50 states dur...

Growth of farmed, wild and F1 hybrid Atlantic salmon parr Salmo salar was investigated under three contrasting feeding regimes in order to understand how varying levels of food availability affects relative growth. Treatments consisted of standard hatchery feeding ( ad libitum ), access to feed for 4 h every day, and access to feed for 24 h on three alternate days weekly. Mortality was low in all treatments, and food availabil...