This was a field protocol and observational mapping study rather than an experiment measuring the ecological effects of grazing. Its authors focused on an area encompassing two corridors in central Italy: Corridor 1 links the Sirente-Velino Regional Natural Park with the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park, while Corridor 2 connects the latter with the Majella National Park. The corridors support Marsican bears and also provide habitat for mammals including roe deer, red deer, wild boar and porcupine.

To compile the data, the researchers requested 2023 livestock records from municipal offices in the 15 municipalities wholly or partly within the study area. The records included the number of animals assigned to farms using municipal pasture under Italy’s annual or seasonal “fida pascolo” grazing-concession system. This system is governed by provisions dating from 1927 and 1928, while the cadastral framework for land parcels derives from an 1886 law. Municipal documents identified the relevant cadastral sheets and parcels and the livestock numbers associated with each farm, although completeness and detail varied among municipalities.

Farmers were interviewed anonymously to fill gaps in animal-category classifications and records of where pastures were located. On-site visits supplied pasture assignments by cadastral sheet and animal numbers by species and age class. The resulting database recorded the municipality, an anonymised farm code, cadastral sheet, area allocated in hectares, and numbers of cattle older than 24 months, cattle aged 6–24 months, cattle younger than six months, sheep and goats older than 12 months, and horses older than six months. Only aggregate information was published to protect farms’ identities and locations.

For mapping, the team selected cadastral sheets from the Italian national cadastral cartography and combined them with livestock data in QGIS. Where animal numbers were available by farm and parcel, the parcels’ areas were proportionally allocated to the relevant cadastral sheet, under an assumption that animals were distributed evenly within it. For Gagliano Aterno, where the records identified grazed sheets but not animal numbers for each one, the calculation used the municipality’s total livestock divided by its total grazed area. The protocol then associated livestock counts and densities with the mapped sheets.

Grazing pressure was expressed in livestock units, or LSUs, to combine different animal categories. Under European Commission Implementing Regulation 2016/669 conversion factors used by the municipalities, cattle and equines over the specified age thresholds counted as 1 LSU, cattle aged six months to two years as 0.6 LSU, cattle below six months as 0.4 LSU, and sheep and goats as 0.15 LSU. The resulting shapefile contained eight mapped variables: LSU, LSU density, equines, equines density, cattle, cattle density, sheep and goats combined, and their density.

Gagliano Aterno had the highest municipal LSU count, at 461.8, followed by Ortona dei Marsi with 373.2, Anversa degli Abruzzi with 350.7 and Scanno with 295.2. Gagliano Aterno also recorded the most cattle, with 366, compared with 204 in Ortona dei Marsi and 166 in Cocullo. Cattle density was highest in Ortona dei Marsi at 2.03 cattle per hectare of grazed cadastral sheets, followed by Scanno at 0.96. Anversa degli Abruzzi had the largest combined sheep-and-goat count, 1,173 animals, and the highest density, 8.21 individuals per hectare; Scanno ranked third in that category’s density at 5.38. Ortona dei Marsi had both the largest equine population, 117, and the highest equine density, 1.62 per hectare.

The municipal LSU estimates were generally higher than values from two larger-scale studies by Malek and colleagues, although some municipalities showed higher comparison values in one of those datasets. After horses were excluded because the comparison datasets omitted them, the protocol’s municipal values showed a moderate correlation with Malek et al. (2024a), although the result was not statistically significant at the 0.05 threshold (Spearman’s rho 0.47, p=0.08). Correlation with Malek et al. (2024b) was weak (Spearman’s rho 0.14, p=0.02). The authors attributed differences to methodological variation and the use of different LSU coefficients.

Several limitations constrain the maps. They exclude livestock on private pastureland because those data were unavailable, which may cause some underestimation even though private grazing was a small part of the mapped region. The method assigns livestock to cadastral sheets rather than locating individual animals, and its homogeneous-distribution assumption may not reflect unequal forage availability or herds concentrating in particular places. Results also have limited temporal validity because municipal grazing concessions are renewed annually and may change each year. The protocol nevertheless identifies mapped areas for assessing potential overgrazing and the interactions between pasture activity, habitat conditions, wildlife and possible pathogen transmission in bear corridors.

Subject of Research: Standardised mapping of livestock grazing pressure in two Central Apennines ecological corridors

Article Title: Map of livestock density in Central Appenines: a standardised protocol

Article References: Dragonetti, C., Masiello, G., Villa, F., Von Kempis, S. R., Cipollone, M., & Di Marco, M. (2025). Map of livestock density in Central Appenines: a standardised protocol. Nature Conservation, 59, 335-349. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.59.155735

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/natureconservation.59.155735

Keywords: livestock density, grazing pressure, Central Apennines, Marsican brown bear, municipal pastures, livestock units, GIS mapping, biodiversity conservation, livestock, density, Central, Appenines

The genes in question, BMP15 and GDF9, are among the most celebrated regulators of female fertility in all of mammals. Both encode growth factors secreted by the oocyte, the egg cell itself, and both belong to the transforming growth factor-beta superfamily, a large group of signaling proteins that orchestrate development throughout the body. During folliculogenesis, the process by which ovarian follicles mature, BMP15 and GDF9 are produced by oocytes within growing follicles and act on the surrounding granulosa and cumulus cells in a paracrine fashion. BMP15 drives granulosa cell proliferation, cumulus expansion, and follicular development, while GDF9, located on ovine chromosome 5, is essential for early follicle progression, normal ovulation, fertilization, and subsequent reproductive performance. The stakes are high: in GDF9-null mice, and in ewes carrying naturally occurring inactivating GDF9 mutations, follicular development arrests entirely beyond the primary stage.

What makes these genes especially tantalizing for sheep breeders is their dosage-sensitive behavior. Landmark studies in New Zealand and Irish flocks showed that mutations in BMP15 can increase ovulation rate in heterozygous carriers while rendering homozygous carriers completely infertile—an unusual genetic pattern that made BMP15 a poster child for prolificacy research. Similar associations emerged in Cambridge and Belclare sheep, and Chinese breeds such as the prolific Small-tailed Han sheep have been screened extensively for BMP15 and GDF9 variants. Given this pedigree, the Qinghai team reasoned that if Tibetan sheep carried functional variants in these genes, those variants might explain—or eventually help breeders improve—their characteristically small litters.

The study combined gene cloning, bioinformatic prediction, quantitative real-time PCR, and a genotyping technology called improved multiplex ligase detection reaction, or iMLDR. From Tibetan ewes raised on a single commercial farm in Gonghe County, the researchers collected jugular vein blood from 200 healthy adults aged three to four years, each with complete litter-size records spanning two to three parities. All ewes were naturally mated during the same autumn breeding season, with no exogenous hormones administered, and lambing records were verified by farm technicians. A separate group of six six-month-old ewes from the same flock provided twelve tissues—hypothalamus, heart, lung, kidney, liver, spleen, muscle, uterus, ovary, oviduct, rumen, and duodenum—snap-frozen in liquid nitrogen for exploratory expression profiling.

Cloning revealed predicted open reading frames of 468 base pairs within the BMP15 fragment and 405 base pairs within the GDF9 fragment, encoding 155 and 134 amino acids respectively. Because these lengths fall far short of the known full-length ovine precursor proteins, the sequences must be regarded as partial coding fragments rather than complete coding sequences—a limitation the authors emphasize throughout. Phylogenetic analysis confirmed the fragments belong squarely with domestic sheep: the predicted amino acid sequences showed the highest similarity to Ovis aries reference sequences, followed by yak, with the lowest similarity to domestic dog for BMP15 and to cichlid fish for GDF9. Bioinformatic prediction painted a contrasting portrait of the two protein fragments. The BMP15 fragment showed slight overall hydrophobicity, with a grand average of hydropathicity of 0.026, and carried one transmembrane-like segment near its N-terminus spanning roughly residues 10 through 27. The GDF9 fragment was hydrophilic overall, with a hydropathicity average of minus 0.323, and carried a predicted Sec-type signal peptide with a potential cleavage site between amino acids 25 and 26—a hallmark of proteins targeted to the classical secretory pathway. The BMP15 fragment was predicted to be stable, with an instability index of 35.21, while the GDF9 fragment, at 53.62, was predicted unstable. Both fragments were dominated by random coils and alpha-helices, and each carried 13 predicted phosphorylation sites.

The expression results delivered one genuine surprise. As expected, GDF9 transcript abundance was highest in the ovary, consistent with its established role as an oocyte-derived factor, followed by kidney and uterus. But BMP15, rather than peaking in the ovary, showed its highest expression in the oviduct—the tube where gamete transport, fertilization, and early embryo–maternal communication occur—with a relatively high signal also detected in the liver. The authors stress that these extra-ovarian BMP15 signals are preliminary observations from an exploratory analysis: the ewes’ estrous-cycle stages could not be determined, reference-gene stability was not systematically evaluated across tissues, and no protein-level or spatial-localization validation was performed. Still, the oviduct finding hints at a potential extra-ovarian expression pattern that previous work in goats, where BMP15 generally showed more tissue-restricted expression, had not suggested.

The heart of the study, however, lay in its association analysis. From the team’s prior whole-genome resequencing data for Tibetan sheep, four single-nucleotide polymorphisms were selected: two in BMP15, located on the X chromosome, and two in GDF9, on chromosome 5. Standardized annotation using the Ensembl Variant Effect Predictor against the ovine ARS-UI_Ramb_v3.0 reference genome classified the variants as two synonymous and two missense changes. The missense variants were BMP15 p.Leu251Pro, a leucine-to-proline substitution at amino acid position 251, and GDF9 p.Arg87His, an arginine-to-histidine substitution at position 87. The synonymous variants altered codons from GTG to GTA and CTA to CTG without changing the encoded valine and leucine residues. Probing the potential impact of the missense substitutions with SIFT, the team found both predicted to be tolerated, with scores of 0.16 and 0.12 respectively—preliminary evidence that these substitutions may not disrupt protein function.

Genotyping all 200 ewes by iMLDR on an ABI 3730XL analyzer revealed a population with limited variation. Three loci showed very low heterozygosity, with the synonymous BMP15 variant and the missense GDF9 variant each carried by only seven heterozygous animals out of 200. The GDF9 synonymous locus was the most polymorphic, with heterozygosity of 0.43 and a polymorphic information content of 0.34. No locus deviated significantly from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. When the researchers modeled the relationship between genotype and litter size using a General Linear Model that accounted for parity effects, the verdict was unambiguous: none of the four SNPs showed a significant association with litter size, with all P values exceeding 0.05 and partial eta-squared effect sizes ranging from less than 0.001 to 0.008—indicating very small genotype effects. Haplotype reconstruction identified three haplotypes for each gene, but linkage disequilibrium analysis showed weak allelic correlation between the two SNPs within each gene: although the D-prime statistic reached 1.0 for both pairs, the r-squared values were a mere 0.001 for BMP15 and 0.039 for GDF9.

Why did the famous prolificacy genes come up empty? The authors point to several plausible explanations. First, Tibetan sheep produce so few twins that phenotypic variation in litter size is extremely limited, reducing statistical power to detect genotype–phenotype associations even when they exist. Second, while 200 ewes is a respectable sample, it may still be insufficient for SNPs with small genetic effects, particularly when some genotypes occur at very low frequencies—the GG genotype at one BMP15 locus appeared in only three animals, and the CT genotype at another in only seven. Third, and perhaps most fundamentally, both missense variants were predicted by SIFT to be tolerated, suggesting these particular loci may simply not be causal variants affecting litter size, nor in strong linkage disequilibrium with functional variants that do. The findings echo a broader lesson from prolificacy genetics: dosage-sensitive mutations that dramatically alter ovulation rate in some breeds, such as the BMP15 mutations of Cambridge and Belclare sheep or the FecB mutation of Booroola Merinos, are not necessarily present—or relevant—in every population.

The study’s real contribution is baseline data. By characterizing partial sequences, exploratory expression profiles, population-genetic parameters, haplotypes, and linkage disequilibrium for BMP15 and GDF9 in Tibetan sheep, the team has laid groundwork for future identification and validation of reproduction-related functional variants in this high-altitude breed. The authors call for full-length coding sequence cloning, protein-level validation with Western blotting and immunohistochemistry, larger sample sizes, and in vivo and in vitro functional assays to clarify the complete molecular structures and biological functions of these oocyte-secreted growth factors. Until then, the genetic roots of Tibetan sheep’s modest fertility remain an open question—one shaped, the evidence suggests, not by single famous mutations but by the complex interplay of hypoxia adaptation, energy metabolism, endocrine regulation, and ovarian function forged across thousands of generations on the Roof of the World.

Subject of Research: Genetics

Article Title: Genetic variants of BMP15 and GDF9 genes and their association with litter size in Tibetan sheep

Article References: Zhang, L., Zhang, Y., Deng, Y., He, N., Sun, R., & Zhang, J. (2026). Genetic variants of BMP15 and GDF9 genes and their association with litter size in Tibetan sheep. Frontiers in Animal Science, 7, Article 1904014. https://doi.org/10.3389/fanim.2026.1904014

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fanim.2026.1904014

Keywords: Genetic, variants, BMP15, GDF9, genes, association, litter, size, Tibetan, sheep, scientific research

The challenge the team faced was a familiar one in animal research: how to measure posture continuously without attaching markers, sensors, or harnesses to the animal. Marker-based systems require extensive animal preparation and can interfere with natural behavior, while manual observation is too imprecise for rigorous analysis. Their solution was a custom pipeline built around a stereo camera that records the animal from two viewpoints simultaneously, feeding the footage into a deep learning system trained to detect fifteen anatomical landmarks on the sheep’s body. The result is a markerless record of how the animal’s body position shapes its internal pressure landscape.

The technical core of the system is a two-stage detection process. First, a custom object detector locates the sheep in each frame, isolating the animal from its surroundings. Second, a landmark detection network identifies fifteen anatomical points on the sheep’s body, from the head and neck to the limbs and hooves. The team trained this network on footage from six sheep, giving it enough appearance variability to handle the low inter-individual variation within the species. The pipeline was designed to work on animals it has never seen before, without requiring additional labeling or retraining.

Once the landmarks are detected, the system reconstructs the sheep’s three-dimensional body position from the two camera viewpoints. This reconstruction is then refined using a smoothing process that enforces temporal continuity, ensuring that the record of the animal’s movement is stable and reliable. The team evaluated this refinement against the raw detections, confirming that the smoothed record is more consistent than the unprocessed data. The result is a stable, three-dimensional record of how the animal moves through its environment.

The final stage of the pipeline classifies the sheep’s body position into predefined categories, such as standing, lying, and other postures. This classification allows the team to segment video sequences into meaningful intervals, facilitating retrospective analysis and simplifying future research. The team trained this classifier on footage from six sheep, giving it enough variability to handle the low inter-individual variation within the species. The result is a system that can automatically segment hours of footage into meaningful intervals.

The team paired this posture pipeline with eight simultaneously recorded pressure signals, selected because they were critical to investigations of cerebrospinal fluid dynamics. The pressure channels are treated generically throughout the system, allowing the number and type of measurements to change without intrinsically tying the pipeline to a specific set of signals. The team synchronized the pressure recordings with the stereo footage, creating a complete record of how the animal’s body position shapes its internal pressure landscape. The result is a system that can correlate posture with physiology in a living animal.

The team evaluated the pipeline on footage from six sheep, confirming that it works on animals it has never seen before without requiring additional labeling or retraining. The annotated landmarks encompass frames from six sheep, providing sufficient appearance variability to support generalization given the low inter-individual variation within the species. The pipeline was designed to be modular, supporting flexible integration of new detection networks and pressure signals. The result is a system that can adapt to future advances in animal research.

The team acknowledged that the pipeline has limitations. The system records eight pressure signals that were selected because they were critical to investigations of cerebrospinal fluid dynamics, but the pipeline is not intrinsically tied to this specific set of measurements. The team also noted that the pipeline was evaluated on a limited number of animals, and that future work should expand the evaluation to more subjects. The result is a system that can adapt to future advances in animal research.

The team concluded that their markerless pipeline offers a new way to correlate posture with physiology in a living animal. By pairing a simple stereo camera with eight simultaneously recorded pressure signals, the system can interpret how body position shapes the internal pressure landscape of a living sheep. The pipeline was designed to be modular, supporting flexible integration of future advances in detection networks and pressure signals. The result is a system that can adapt to future advances in animal research.

Subject of Research: Physiology

Article Title: Automated 3D sheep posture estimation and telemetric pressure synchronization via a markerless computer vision pipeline

Article References: Roncoroni, M., Podgoršak, A., Kaufmann, A., Flürenbrock, F., Trimmel, N. E., Oertel, M. F., Zeilinger, M., Weisskopf, M., & Schmid Daners, M. (2026). Automated 3D sheep posture estimation and telemetric pressure synchronization via a markerless computer vision pipeline. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 13, Article 1933870. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2026.1933870

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2026.1933870

Keywords: sheep, stereo camera, posture, pressure signals, cerebrospinal fluid, markerless, animal model, physiology, Automated, estimation, telemetric, pressure

The problem stems from evolutionary history rather than laboratory error. Domestic sheep and European mouflon share a close common ancestry, and the mitochondrial markers most commonly used in carnivore diet studies, such as fragments of the 12S rRNA gene and cytochrome b, are too conserved to separate them. In practice, metabarcoding studies can usually assign Ovis prey only to the genus level, leaving researchers unable to say whether a wolf consumed a protected wild ungulate or a farmer’s livestock. Because these two outcomes carry markedly different ecological and socio-economic weight, misidentification can skew predation assessments, bias estimates of livestock losses and ultimately misdirect wildlife conservation and management efforts, particularly for a recovering large carnivore like the grey wolf (Canis lupus).

A research team working in the French Alps has now developed a solution: a short, diagnostic fragment of the mitochondrial D-loop, a highly variable non-coding control region, that effectively discriminates between the two species. The new marker, named OvisCR, is a 178 base pair amplicon containing 43 single nucleotide polymorphisms. In reference samples, it resolved four mouflon haplotypes and 35 domestic sheep haplotypes with no haplotypes shared between the species. Tested on 115 wolf scat samples in which a general metabarcoding marker had already detected Ovis prey, the fragment achieved species-level assignment for more than 81 percent of scats with Ovis reads, regardless of the bioinformatic pipeline used. The findings, published in Metabarcoding and Metagenomics, provide a robust and practical tool for refining ecological inference in carnivore trophic studies.

Building a reliable diagnostic marker required reference data that public databases simply could not provide. Searches of GenBank revealed that none of the available mouflon D-loop sequences originated from French populations, while none of the numerous sheep sequences with geographic information corresponded to breeds commonly raised in France. No haplotype in the database was exclusive to either species. To close this gap, the team collected 46 European mouflon samples from the Corsican population and four mainland populations in south-western France, alongside 46 domestic sheep tissue samples from the main meat processing plant in the Alps, covering breeds such as Merinos, Lacaune, Mourerous and Préalpes. The mouflon samples combined legally hunted or captured animals with non-invasive faecal and hair collections.

Sequencing the entire D-loop region, roughly 674 base pairs, from these 92 reference samples revealed 45 distinct haplotypes with 82 variable sites and no overlap between species. Haplotype diversity was dramatically higher in domestic sheep, with 40 haplotypes and a diversity index of 0.999, than in European mouflon, with five haplotypes and a diversity of 0.685. This asymmetry likely reflects artificial selection and the diverse geographic origins of sheep breeds, in contrast to founder effects and restricted gene flow in introduced mouflon populations. Rarefaction curves confirmed that all mouflon control region haplotypes in the study area had been detected with a relatively small sample size, whereas additional sheep sampling would likely reveal further haplotypic diversity.

From this alignment, the researchers identified the 178 base pair OvisCR fragment, short enough for metabarcoding of degraded scat DNA yet variable enough to discriminate the species. Most mouflon haplotypes differed from sheep haplotypes by at least three mutation sites, and the flanking regions were sufficiently conserved to design primers with minimal degenerate bases. One exception underscored the evolutionary proximity of the two taxa: a mouflon haplotype, CR178_OM004, differed by only a single mutation from two domestic sheep haplotypes at the short-fragment scale, although the longer 674 base pair fragment separated it by at least six mutations. The team conservatively classified scat samples carrying this haplotype as Ovis sp. rather than assigning a species, prioritising robustness over maximal resolution in a management-sensitive context.

The empirical test used 115 wolf scat samples collected in the same geographic area as the reference samples, all previously found to contain Ovis prey. DNA was extracted and two fragments were amplified in parallel: a 60 to 140 base pair portion of the 12S rRNA gene to confirm Ovis presence, and the new OvisCR amplicon. Sequencing was performed on the Ion Torrent platform with a one-step PCR protocol that reduces the risk of cross-contamination and tag-jumps. A species-specific blocker prevented amplification of wolf DNA in the 12S reaction. The 12S marker confirmed Ovis prey in all 115 samples, and the OvisCR fragment detected Ovis with more than 10 reads in 95.7 to 96.5 percent of samples depending on the pipeline.

A central methodological contribution was the comparison of two widely used bioinformatic pipelines: OBITools, which clusters sequences into operational taxonomic units using dissimilarity thresholds, and DADA2, which infers amplicon sequence variants through explicit error modelling. Both pipelines demonstrated similar accuracy, with the OvisCR fragment achieving species-level assignment for more than 81 percent of scats with Ovis reads detected. DADA2 consistently yielded slightly more species-level assignments, particularly at lower read thresholds, likely due to its denoising strategy, while the OTU-based OBITools approach proved more conservative for samples with limited read depth. Discrepancies between pipelines were rare and primarily concerned cases with few OvisCR reads rather than conflicting species assignments, highlighting the robustness of the marker across analytical frameworks.

Read-count thresholds emerged as a critical, yet often arbitrary, step in interpretation. Negative and positive controls showed that contamination levels for the OvisCR fragment were consistently low, never exceeding 10 Ovis reads, which justified exploring a lower threshold of 10 reads per sequence per sample compared with the conservative 100-read threshold applied to the universal 12S marker. Lowering the threshold increased the number of species-level assignments without introducing clear mis-assignments. Samples assigned only at the genus level had significantly fewer reads than those assigned to species, suggesting that taxonomic resolution was partly constrained by sequencing depth rather than by the marker itself. The impact of thresholds depended more strongly on the molecular marker than on the choice of pipeline, a pattern that contrasts with parts of the metabarcoding literature and warrants further investigation.

From a conservation and management perspective, the ability to discriminate between predation on domestic sheep and European mouflon is essential. Domestic sheep predation is a central driver of human-wolf conflict in France and elsewhere, while predation on mouflon, though relevant for game management, carries different implications. Misclassifying one species as the other could lead to incorrect estimates of livestock depredation, misinformed conflict mitigation strategies and flawed compensation or culling decisions. The OvisCR approach can serve as a model for similar developments targeting other taxonomically challenging prey groups, though the authors caution that the diagnostic value of the fragment should not be assumed transferable beyond the French context. Broader geographic applicability requires prior validation using region-specific reference datasets encompassing the diversity of domestic sheep, European mouflon and other Ovis species, a reminder that in metabarcoding, local reference data remain the foundation of every reliable species assignment.

Subject of Research: Genetics

Article Title: A 178 bp diagnostic D-loop fragment (OvisCR) to discriminate domestic sheep ( Ovis aries ) and European mouflon ( Ovis musimon ) in diet metabarcoding studies

Article References: Pirog, A., Lavarec, J., Rousselot, S., Kaerle, C., Duchamp, C., & Queney, G. (2026). A 178 bp diagnostic D-loop fragment (OvisCR) to discriminate domestic sheep (Ovis aries) and European mouflon (Ovis musimon) in diet metabarcoding studies. Metabarcoding and Metagenomics, 10, Article e172476. https://doi.org/10.3897/mbmg.10.172476

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/mbmg.10.172476

Keywords: metabarcoding, grey wolf, DNA diet analysis, mouflon, sheep, mitochondrial D-loop, conservation, diagnostic, D-loop, fragment, OvisCR, discriminate

The team turned to pooled-sample whole genome sequencing, or Pool-seq, a cost-effective strategy in which DNA from many individual worms is sequenced together and allele frequencies are estimated from the pooled read depths. This approach is particularly well suited to organisms like H. contortus, whose enormous effective population sizes, extraordinary fecundity and extensive standing genetic variation fuel rapid adaptation and the spread of anthelmintic resistance. While earlier studies relied on reduced-representation sequencing or targeted marker panels to probe population structure, only whole genome sequencing can fully characterize genome-wide differentiation and pinpoint where divergent selection acts.

The results paint a picture of a parasite population that is, for the most part, genomically well mixed across the country. Nucleotide diversity within populations ranged from 0.0211 to 0.0253, values that reflect the tremendous standing variation harbored within each farm’s worm community. Meanwhile, the fixation index, F_ST, remained below 0.1 for most population pairs, indicating relatively low genomic differentiation among most Swedish isolates. In practical terms, the worms on any given farm carry most of the genetic variation found anywhere in the sampled region, a pattern consistent with extensive gene flow among parasite populations.

Yet the study was not without its surprises. Three population pairs stood out with markedly higher genomic differentiation, with F_ST values between 0.144 and 0.157, combined with lower within-population nucleotide diversity of 0.0211 to 0.0227. Intriguingly, this divergence was not spread evenly across the genome but concentrated on chromosomes 4, 5 and X. Such localized divergence can signal regions under divergent selection, or areas where recombination and demographic history have shaped patterns of variation differently from the rest of the genome.

When the researchers examined significantly differentiated single nucleotide polymorphisms, they found them linked to a limited set of annotated genes involved in regulatory processes, signalling pathways and nervous system-related functions. These functional categories are provocative in the context of parasite biology, since nervous system genes have previously been implicated in anthelmintic drug responses. However, the authors are careful to note that the biological basis of these differentiation patterns remains unclear and will require further investigation using phenotype-linked data and farm-management metadata before any resistance-associated interpretation can be made.

The methodological pipeline behind the study reflects standard practice in modern parasite genomics. Raw sequencing reads in FASTQ format were aligned to the reference genome using the Burrows-Wheeler Aligner with maximal exact matches seeding, producing SAM and then compressed BAM files. Variant calling generated BCF and VCF files from which single nucleotide polymorphisms were extracted. Statistical analyses included principal component analysis to visualize population structure, calculation of pairwise F_ST and nucleotide diversity, and Fisher’s exact tests to identify significantly differentiated SNPs, with gene ontology annotations used to interpret the functions of genes harboring differentiated variants.

Pool-seq offers clear advantages for surveillance-oriented genomics. By sequencing pools rather than individuals, researchers can characterize broad population-genomic patterns at a fraction of the cost, making it feasible to sample many farms and track variant distributions over time and space. For H. contortus, where anthelmintic resistance is a growing concern for sheep farmers, this kind of genome-wide baseline is a valuable foundation for future research on parasite adaptation, resistance surveillance and control strategies. The approach does, however, have limitations: pooling obscures individual-level haplotypes and can complicate the detection of rare variants, which is why the authors position Pool-seq as a tool for describing broad patterns rather than a substitute for individual-level studies when fine-scale resolution is needed.

The study material consisted of anonymised residual biobanked samples obtained through routine diagnostic laboratory activities, with technical assistance in sample collection and parasite identification provided by Vidilab AB in Enköping, Sweden. Sequencing was carried out by the SNP&SEQ Technology Platform in Uppsala, part of the National Genomics Infrastructure Sweden and Science for Life Laboratory. Computational resources were provided by the National Academic Infrastructure for Supercomputing in Sweden, and the work was funded by FORMAS with open access funding from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

What makes these findings broadly significant is the demonstration that Swedish H. contortus populations harbor most of their variation within, rather than between, farms. This pattern has implications for how resistance alleles might spread: if gene flow among parasite populations is extensive, a resistance variant emerging on one farm could, in principle, disseminate widely through the national parasite population. Conversely, the three highly differentiated population pairs, with divergence concentrated on specific chromosomes, suggest that localized selective pressures or demographic isolation can still carve out distinctive genomic regions worth monitoring.

As the first genome-wide characterization of field-derived H. contortus across multiple Swedish sheep farms, this study establishes a reference point against which future genomic variation can be measured. The authors emphasize that Pool-seq is a useful method for describing broad population-genomic patterns in this species and that their findings provide a valuable foundation for future research on parasite adaptation, resistance, surveillance and control. With anthelmintic resistance an escalating challenge for small ruminant production worldwide, genome-wide baselines of this kind are an essential first step toward tracking how parasite populations evolve under drug pressure and informing the parasite control strategies of tomorrow.

Subject of Research: Whole genome pool sequencing reveals genomic variation in field Haemonchus contortus isolates in Sweden

Article Title: Whole genome pool sequencing reveals genomic variation in field Haemonchus contortus isolates in Sweden

Article References: Liu, N., Baltrušis, P., Ohlsson, Å., Höglund, J., & Mikko, S. (2026). Whole genome pool sequencing reveals genomic variation in field Haemonchus contortus isolates in Sweden. BMC Genomics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-026-13449-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12864-026-13449-5

Keywords: Haemonchus contortus, Pool-seq, population genomics, genomic variation, nematode, sheep, parasite genomics, anthelmintic resistance, nucleotide diversity, fixation index, Sweden, whole genome sequencing

The stakes are enormous. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to an estimated 1.1 billion cattle, sheep, and goats, roughly 27 percent of the global population of these species. They convert grasses and other fiber-rich feeds into meat and milk that underpin food and nutritional security for millions of Africans, supply draft power and manure to smallholder farms, and account for up to 75 percent of household incomes in some rural areas. Demand for animal-source proteins is projected to rise by as much as 55 percent per person by 2050, and many governments in the region are betting on livestock to drive economic growth. Yet parasites quietly erode that potential. Previous estimates suggest livestock keepers lose on average one animal per cattle sold and one animal for every two sheep or goats sold, and gastrointestinal parasites remain a major pathological cause of low efficiency and high mortality. Because many of these parasites also infect humans, the burden extends beyond the farm gate into public health.

To build the evidence map, the researchers followed PRISMA guidelines, searching Web of Science and Google Scholar between April and July 2025 for studies published between 2015 and 2024 that reported fecal-based parasite prevalence in cattle, sheep, or goats. Google Scholar was deliberately included because research outputs from sub-Saharan Africa are under-represented in major bibliographic databases, and the platform indexes African Journals Online and other regional sources. The search retrieved 507 records, which were filtered down to 111 eligible studies, including two doctoral theses. Studies based on experimental infections, intervention trials, case reports, reviews, or modeling were excluded, as were those lacking clear sample sizes or prevalence figures. The team applied the Joanna Briggs Institute checklist to appraise risk of bias and used the Condition, Context, Population framework to define eligibility, focusing on non-apparently sick ruminants in sub-Saharan Africa examined through field-applicable coprological methods.

The statistical machinery behind the pooled estimate is technically demanding. Because individual studies reported positive cases and total sample sizes rather than treatment effects, the team used meta-analysis of proportions, the recommended approach for prevalence synthesis. Raw proportions were normalized with the Freeman-Tukey double-arcsine transformation to address skewness and stabilize variance, then pooled with random-effects models estimated by restricted maximum likelihood, using the meta and metafor packages in R. Heterogeneity was quantified with Cochran’s Q, I², and 95 percent prediction intervals. Sensitivity analyses included leave-one-out assessments, identification of influential studies via externally studentized residuals with a z-score cutoff of 2.0, and risk-of-bias stratification. The results proved robust: excluding influential studies shifted the combined estimate only from 59.1 to 58.9 percent, and restricting the analysis to low-risk studies yielded 55.8 percent, with fully overlapping confidence intervals across all scenarios.

The pooled figures reveal a consistent host-species pattern. Sheep carried the highest prevalence at 64.0 percent, goats followed closely at 63.3 percent, and cattle trailed at 48.2 percent. The overlapping confidence intervals for sheep and goats suggest their regional burdens are broadly similar, and the authors attribute the small-ruminant disadvantage to a web of behavioral, immunological, and physiological factors. Sheep and goats, particularly when forage is scarce, graze closer to the ground and consume shorter herbage, increasing contact with infective third-stage larvae concentrated near the herbage-soil interface. Differences in acquired immunity, body size, and nutritional status may further depress average fecal detection in cattle. The authors caution, however, that the synthesis cannot pin the species gap on any single mechanism because these variables were not consistently reported across the primary studies.

Geography mattered just as much. Prevalence peaked in West Africa at 74.9 percent and Central Africa at 74.0 percent, fell to 55.0 percent in East Africa, and dropped to 26.4 percent in Southern Africa. Wetter, more humid conditions in parts of West and Central Africa likely favor the development and survival of free-living parasite stages and increase pasture contamination, while drier Southern African systems may experience lower transmission pressure. Regional differences in veterinary service coverage and anthelmintic use may reinforce these climatic effects: irregular deworming and limited access to veterinary inputs in many smallholder systems in East and West Africa are associated with sustained high prevalence, whereas more structured parasite control programs in some Southern African commercial systems likely contribute to lower burdens. The authors stress these explanations remain plausible hypotheses rather than causal inferences, and that the region variable is confounded by production systems, host composition, diagnostic methods, and uneven country representation.

Sample source also shaped the picture. On-farm studies, comprising 86 studies and 50,480 animals, yielded a pooled prevalence of 52.6 percent, while 21 abattoir-based studies covering 5,996 animals produced 48.2 percent. The on-farm data confirm that fecal-detected parasitism is widespread in the animals from which meat, milk, and manure are derived, while the abattoir figures show that infected animals routinely enter slaughter channels. Abattoir populations are selected animals, which may differ from farm populations in age, sex, and health status, so the two evidence streams should be treated as complementary rather than interchangeable. The authors argue that abattoirs deserve closer attention as surveillance interfaces, since slaughter and carcass processing involve direct contact with intestinal contents, blood, offal, and fecal material, creating recognized points of zoonotic exposure.

The parasite taxa most frequently reported tell their own story. Across all species, Strongyloides appeared in 137 records and Fasciola in 79, making them the dominant genera, while Trichuris, Eimeria, and Moniezia were also commonly detected. Among the smaller subset of records with species-level identification, Haemonchus contortus appeared in 18 records and Fasciola gigantica in 15. In cattle, F. gigantica and Schistosoma bovis were the most frequently reported species, while Fasciola, Strongyloides, and Eimeria dominated at genus level. In sheep and goats, H. contortus was the most frequently identified species, with Strongyloides and Trichuris prominent at genus level. These patterns point to strongyle-type nematodes in small ruminants and Fasciola species in cattle as priority targets for improved surveillance and integrated parasite management, particularly in areas with freshwater-snail habitats suitable for fluke transmission.

Perhaps the most sobering finding concerns what the evidence map does not show. Although sub-Saharan Africa encompasses 46 countries, the 111 eligible studies came from only 18, with roughly 73 percent originating from Ethiopia and Nigeria alone. No eligible published studies were identified from Angola, Guinea, Mali, Mozambique, or Sudan, among others. This absence should not be read as evidence of low parasite risk; rather, it reflects limited local surveillance, constraints in diagnostic capacity, limited international visibility of national research outputs, and the inaccessibility of unpublished reports and theses in languages other than English. The English-language eligibility criterion may have excluded relevant evidence from Francophone and Lusophone countries, local journals, government reports, and unpublished theses. The authors argue that countries with sparse evidence should be regarded as priority settings for representative baseline surveys rather than assumed low-risk areas.

Diagnostic limitations compound the geographic gaps. Flotation combined with sedimentation was the most frequently used method, appearing in 79 studies, followed by flotation alone in 19 and sedimentation alone in 10. These approaches are practical and field-applicable, but routine coprological examination often identifies eggs or oocysts only to broad taxonomic levels, particularly for strongylid nematodes. Consequently, genus-level identification dominated the evidence base, and the true species composition of gastrointestinal parasite communities across the region is likely largely unknown, fundamentally limiting the capacity to implement targeted, species-specific control strategies. The authors recommend that future studies report a minimum set of contextual variables, including season, agroecological zone, host details, production system, sample source, analytical detection threshold, and species-level identification, ideally adhering to the STROBE framework for observational studies to enhance transparency and reproducibility.

The implications ripple outward into economics, food safety, and even climate. Perry and colleagues previously ranked gastrointestinal parasite infection as a major poverty alleviation constraint for smallholder livestock keepers in sub-Saharan Africa, because infections depreciate animal condition and performance, limiting farmers’ chances to tap growing markets for animal-source foods. Yet clear and recent quantitative estimates of the impact of strongyle-type nematodes and Fasciola species on productive and reproductive performance in the region remain absent, leaving the true economic benefit of reducing prevalence unclear. Ruminants are also under increasing scrutiny as major emitters of enteric methane, and only one study to date has quantified the effect of gastrointestinal parasitism on methane emissions in sheep, despite the close relation between animal health, feed use efficiency, and greenhouse gas output. Improved parasite control could represent a low-cost co-benefit strategy for enhancing productivity while reducing emissions intensity.

The authors are careful about what their headline number means. The very broad prediction interval and extreme heterogeneity suggest the expected prevalence in any individual comparable setting could range from low to very high, so the 59.1 percent figure is best interpreted as a summary of the scale of the problem across the available evidence base rather than a substitute for locally representative surveillance. The review also focused exclusively on fecal-based diagnostics, excluding evidence generated solely through post-mortem inspection, serology, or other non-coprological methods, so the results describe fecal-detected parasitism rather than a complete estimate of infection or disease burden for all parasite taxa. Nevertheless, the sensitivity analyses strengthen confidence that frequent fecal detection of gastrointestinal parasites is not attributable solely to studies with greater risk of bias, and the persistence of moderate-to-high pooled estimates across all quality strata supports the conclusion that parasitism is a genuine and widespread constraint.

By mapping where fecal-based prevalence evidence is geographically sparse, diagnostically limited, or insufficiently resolved at species level, the study provides a foundation for the more representative surveillance and burden data needed to support Global Burden of Animal Diseases assessments of livestock disease impacts in the region. The authors call for representative surveillance in underrepresented settings, standardized diagnostics with improved species-level confirmation, and studies linking parasitism to productivity, economic loss, food safety, and anthelmintic resistance. For a region betting its food security on 1.1 billion ruminants, the message is clear: the parasites are there, they are measurable, and the first step to controlling them is knowing exactly where and what they are.

Subject of Research: Prevalence of fecal-detected gastrointestinal parasites in cattle, sheep, and goats across sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic evidence map and meta-analysis

Article Title: Prevalence of fecal-detected gastrointestinal parasites in cattle, sheep, and goats across sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic evidence map and meta-analysis

Article References: Bateki, C. A., Tielkes, S., & Schlecht, E. (2026). Prevalence of fecal-detected gastrointestinal parasites in cattle, sheep, and goats across sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic evidence map and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 13, Article 1984505. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2026.1984505

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2026.1984505

Keywords: Prevalence, fecal-detected, gastrointestinal, parasites, cattle, sheep, goats, across, sub-Saharan, Africa, systematic, evidence

The site first yielded pottery sherds and bronze objects in 1886, but its interpretation as a burnt offering place dating to the Iron and Roman periods only emerged after excavations conducted between 1967 and 1969. Further rescue excavations followed in 1997–1998 and 2000–2003 ahead of planned construction, led by the Tyrolean heritage conservator Johannes Pöll. The animal remains examined in the new study come from those 1997 excavations and belong to Phase 1, the earliest horizon of the site, which began to be used in the second half of the sixth century BC according to previous research. This first phase is characterized by three solidly built hearths with stone substructures and stone edgings, a channel, a post setting, and a strikingly regular accumulation of bones interpreted as a bone depot, possibly a foundation or consecration offering.

In total, 13,584 animal remains were excavated from this horizon, but poor and heavily fragmented preservation meant that only 3,340 specimens, weighing roughly 1.8 kilograms, could be identified and analyzed in detail. Most of the identifiable bones are unburnt, and among the unidentifiable fragments, 88.3 percent show no fire exposure, while 10.6 percent are blackened and only 1.1 percent are calcined. The bones are light brown to yellow in color, with smooth, hard surfaces showing little weathering damage, though some are split lengthwise, likely from alternating freezing and drying conditions.

Sheep and goats dominate the assemblage by count. The small domestic ruminants account for 2,323 finds, nearly 70 percent of the identified material by fragment count and 74.8 percent by minimum number of individuals, though only 35.1 percent by weight. Cattle, represented by 874 finds or just over a quarter of the fragments, nevertheless dominate by weight at 61.3 percent, reflecting their much heavier bones and underlining their role as the principal meat suppliers. Pigs are marginal, with only 113 remains, while dog and horse appear in trace amounts. Among the wild animals, two talus bones of the ibex stand out, alongside remains of beaver, brown hare, red deer antler, and wild boar, one of whose humeri bears deep longitudinal chopping marks from defleshing.

Two features of the bone assemblage proved especially striking: the distribution of skeletal elements and the age profiles of the main species. Among the small ruminants, meat-poor body regions dominate overwhelmingly. The skull area, represented mainly by fragments of the maxilla, mandible, and loose teeth, makes up 70 percent of the finds, while vertebrae and ribs account for only 7.7 percent and the meat-rich regions between shoulder blade and ulna, and between pelvis and tibia, are scarce at 4.5 and 6.4 percent respectively. Notably, the talus bones, or astragali, are well represented at 5.2 percent even though other parts of the foot skeleton are barely present. Cattle show a more balanced distribution, but their skull region is still overrepresented at 38 percent, and horn cores are rare for both groups.

The talus bones themselves are among the most evocative finds. Seven of them bear crossed incised lines on their ventral articular surfaces, six show evidence of fire exposure ranging from black to white discoloration, and one specimen is both incised and burnt. Astragali have a long history of special uses across many cultures, from gaming pieces to ritual objects, and their deliberate treatment at Pfaffenhofen, together with the presence of ibex talons, raises questions about their symbolic significance at the site. The nearest modern ibex populations live only a few kilometers to the south, between the Mugkogel and Roßkogel.

The age profiles reinforce the impression of careful selection. Among the small ruminants, adults make up 91 percent of the tooth evidence, and animals older than seven years are the most common group at 62 percent. Crucially, the age classes between zero and twelve months, and between two and a half and three years, are entirely absent, even though these stages are typically well represented at sites where animals were actually kept. Females dominate at 70 percent, pointing toward dairy exploitation rather than wool production, since wool-focused husbandry would show a more balanced sex ratio. For cattle, adults account for 59.1 percent, and animals between one and two years reach a remarkable 27.3 percent, a selection of young cattle rarely documented in the Iron Age because it would have been economically costly given the importance of cattle for secondary products such as milk, traction, and manure.

Comparisons with other archaeological assemblages sharpen the picture. Ordinary settlement sites such as Pfatten in South Tyrol and Faggen in Tyrol show all body regions represented in roughly equal proportions, whereas Pfaffenhofen’s strong overrepresentation of meat-poor elements resembles the selective patterns known from burnt offering places, where skulls, metapodials, and phalanges were preferentially deposited. A comparison with the Late Bronze Age slaughter site of Prigglitz, where meat-poor regions also dominate, shows an important difference: at Prigglitz, a variety of meat-poor elements including vertebrae, ribs, phalanges, and metapodials are well represented, whereas Pfaffenhofen’s selection is far more targeted. The fragmentation of the bones, with most pieces cut or broken to lengths of roughly six to fifteen centimeters, suggests butchery adapted to the dimensions of cooking pots and serving vessels, but the absence of fine cut marks at joint margins indicates that limbs were severed above and below the joints rather than finely dissected.

On the economic side, the species composition fits the mountainous environment of the Upper Inn Valley, where keeping demanding cattle is difficult and hardy sheep thrive. The sheep stood only about 60 centimeters at the withers, matching a small breed widespread in the Rhaetian Fritzens-Sanzeno cultural area, and metrically resembling Late Iron Age sheep from Faggen. The cattle likewise belonged to a small, robust alpine population, plausibly ancestors of the Oberinntal Grey cattle that survives today in conservation herds. The strong emphasis on sheep, combined with parallels at South Tyrolean sites such as Tiers-Thalerbühel and Latsch, where similar faunal compositions were linked to alpine pasture economy, suggests that transhumant herding may have supplied the animals brought to the site.

The study’s conclusion is cautious but compelling. The bones from Pfaffenhofen’s oldest horizon cannot be classified as everyday slaughter refuse, because only specific age groups and skeletal elements were selected. A connection to ritual activity is considered very likely when the archaeological context of the site, with its hearths, bone depot, and later burnt offering phases, is taken into account, even though definitive proof remains elusive. The absence of good comparative material makes interpretation difficult, but the combination of selective butchery, curated astragali, skewed age profiles, and a mountain pastoral economy offers a vivid glimpse of ritual life in the pre-Roman Alps, where feasting, sacrifice, and perhaps games of chance played out against the backdrop of the Tyrolean mountains.

Subject of Research: Archaeozoological analysis of animal bones from the earliest horizon of an Iron Age burnt offering site at Pfaffenhofen-Trappeleacker in the Austrian Alps

Article Title: Die Tierknochenfunde aus dem ersten Begehungshorizont des latènezeitlichen Opferplatzes von Pfaffenhofen-Trappeleacker (Oberinntal, Tirol)

Article References: Tecchiati, U., Saliari, K., & Pucher, E. (2026). Die Tierknochenfunde aus dem ersten Begehungshorizont des latènezeitlichen Opferplatzes von Pfaffenhofen-Trappeleacker (Oberinntal, Tirol). Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna, 127, 69-83. https://doi.org/10.3897/anhmw.178040

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/anhmw.178040

Keywords: archaeozoology, Iron Age, burnt offering site, Pfaffenhofen-Trappeleacker, Tyrol, Alps, sheep, cattle, astragali, ritual, alpine pastoralism, Fritzens-Sanzeno culture

Pica is far more than an odd behavioral quirk. In sheep production systems it manifests as the persistent ingestion of non-feed substances: geophagia, trichophagia, urine drinking, fence licking, and even plastic chewing. Beyond disrupting normal feeding, it raises the risk of gastrointestinal injury, impaired nutrient absorption, parasitic infection, and lost productivity. Although the full etiology remains unresolved, researchers have long considered pica a multifactorial disorder rooted in nutritional imbalance, metabolic disturbance, and environmental stress, with mineral deficiency or imbalance widely recognized as a major driver. Shortages of elements such as phosphorus, copper, iron, zinc, and selenium can undermine antioxidant defenses and metabolic homeostasis, potentially pushing animals into the abnormal oral behaviors that define the syndrome.

Simple mineral supplementation has shown promise before—earlier work on wool-eating lambs found that dosing with iron, copper, and zinc sulfate salts raised blood mineral levels and produced complete recovery within eight weeks. But the picture is complicated by the fact that pica may also involve oxidative stress, endocrine dysregulation, and metabolic dysfunction. Moreover, whether supplemented minerals actually reach the bloodstream depends on their chemical form, antagonistic interactions among minerals, the rumen environment, and the intricacies of gastrointestinal absorption. This is where the new study departs from convention: instead of relying on minerals alone, the researchers combined them with Shariga-5, a traditional Mongolian multi-herb formula derived from local ethnoveterinary practice and rich in bioactive flavonoids and phenolic acids.

The Mongolian herbal–mineral supplement, or MHMS, was manufactured into solid 5-kilogram lick blocks containing target concentrations of calcium, phosphorus, copper, iron, manganese, zinc, selenium, and cobalt, along with vitamins D3 and E. Embedded within the mineral matrix were five medicinal herbs of the Mongolian Plateau: turmeric rhizome (Shariga), forsythia fruit (Saolong-Jimusi), clove flower buds (Gaoletu-Baori), chebulic myrobalan fruit (Arula), and gardenia fruit (Zhurula). Widely targeted metabolomic profiling of the individual herbs identified 1,427 metabolite annotation records, with phenolic acids accounting for nearly 39 percent and flavonoids another 32 percent—two chemical classes renowned for free-radical scavenging, metal-ion chelation, and anti-inflammatory activity. The design logic was synergy: trace elements supply the cofactors for antioxidant enzymes, while plant secondary metabolites provide complementary redox support.

To test the formula, the team screened East Friesian rams over seven consecutive days, enrolling only animals that showed five to ten instances of pica behaviors per observation day. Twenty rams, averaging about 1.5 years of age and 42.6 kilograms, were randomly split into two groups of ten, each housed in its own pen. The control group received only a basal diet of corn silage, oat hay, alfalfa, and Leymus chinensis hay; the treatment group received the same diet plus continuous free-choice access to an MHMS lick block. After a 14-day adaptation and a 60-day experimental period, blood was drawn before morning feeding, and serum from six animals per group underwent mineral, biochemical, antioxidant, hormonal, and untargeted metabolomic analyses.

The mineral results were strikingly selective. Serum copper roughly doubled, rising from 4.86 to 9.55 micromoles per liter, while zinc climbed from 10.62 to 15.29 and selenium from 0.43 to 0.59 micromoles per liter. Yet calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, potassium, iron, and manganese remained unchanged. This selectivity, the authors argue, suggests the supplement primarily restored the trace elements most closely tied to redox defense, metalloenzyme activity, immune regulation, and metabolic homeostasis. Copper underpins mitochondrial respiration and iron metabolism, zinc is a structural and catalytic factor for countless enzymes and supports epithelial barriers, and selenium is an essential component of glutathione peroxidase, a key peroxide-removing selenoprotein. The pattern also echoes previous work showing that mineral responses in ruminants are shaped not just by dose but by body reserves, absorption efficiency, and antagonistic interactions among elements.

The downstream physiological shifts extended well beyond minerals. Total antioxidant capacity in serum rose significantly, even though the individual enzyme activities of superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and catalase did not change—an indication that the improvement came from the composite, largely non-enzymatic antioxidant pool, plausibly driven by the herbal polyphenols. Biochemical markers told a similar story of de-escalation: serum glucose fell from 4.44 millimoles per liter, sitting at the upper edge of the ovine reference range, to 3.60, a healthier mid-range value, and aspartate aminotransferase activity dropped from 160.70 to 125.35 units per liter, returning from above the normal range to within it. Because AST reflects hepatic metabolic burden and tissue injury—and pica-affected calves have previously shown elevated transaminases linked to copper deficiency—this normalization suggests the supplement eased tissue metabolic stress in the treated animals.

Perhaps the most dramatic changes appeared in the endocrine panel. Serum triiodothyronine, thyroxine, insulin-like growth factor 1, and growth hormone all rose significantly, signaling enhanced metabolic rate and activated anabolic growth signaling, while cortisol—the primary stress hormone of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis—fell markedly, from 943 to 746 picograms per milliliter. The authors note that the supplement’s selenium, copper, zinc, and vitamin E all carry antioxidant functions that could plausibly dampen the HPA axis burden imposed by chronic nutritional stress and oxidative pressure. Previous studies lend support to the mechanism: curcumin supplementation has raised thyroid hormones and lowered cortisol in goats, and vitamin E and selenium combinations have reduced cortisol in transportation-stressed dairy heifers.

The untargeted metabolomics added an exploratory molecular layer. Out of 1,062 putatively annotated serum metabolites, 112 differed significantly between groups—51 higher and 61 lower in the supplemented rams. Pathway analysis ranked porphyrin metabolism, the biochemical route for heme synthesis, as the top candidate pathway, with glycine abundance more than doubled and porphobilinogen reduced to less than half of control levels. Because glycine is the starting substrate for heme biosynthesis and also a precursor for glutathione, the body’s master intracellular antioxidant, its rise fits a scenario of improved antioxidant substrate supply. The drop in porphobilinogen, an early heme precursor that can accumulate abnormally when the pathway falters, correlated positively with serum AST, hinting that reduced accumulation of this intermediate accompanied the easing of tissue metabolic pressure. The authors are careful to flag that this pathway enrichment did not survive multiple-testing correction and the metabolites lack validation against authentic standards, so these findings are hypothesis-generating rather than definitive.

The study also candidly acknowledges its limits: individual lick-block intake was not recorded, the composite design cannot separate the effects of minerals from herbs or their synergy, the sample was modest, and rumen fluid and microbiota were not examined. Even so, the overall picture is compelling—a traditional Mongolian herbal formula fused with trace-element nutrition appears to shift pica-affected rams from a stress-laden, oxidatively burdened metabolic state toward physiological balance, with elevated thyroid and growth hormones, subdued cortisol, stronger antioxidant capacity, and a metabolome inching back toward order. For a condition as old as animal husbandry itself, the remedy may lie partly in knowledge herders on the Mongolian Plateau have carried for generations, now given rigorous, molecule-by-molecule confirmation.

Subject of Research: Effects of a Mongolian herbal–mineral supplement on serum minerals, antioxidants, hormones, and metabolomics in rams with pica

Article Title: Free-choice Mongolian herbal-mineral supplementation improves serum mineral, antioxidant, endocrine, and metabolic indices in rams with pica

Article References: Man, D., Chen, L., Ao, X., Zhang, W., & Na, R. (2026). Free-choice Mongolian herbal-mineral supplementation improves serum mineral, antioxidant, endocrine, and metabolic indices in rams with pica. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 13, Article 1946016. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2026.1946016

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2026.1946016

Keywords: pica, sheep, herbal-mineral supplement, trace minerals, antioxidant capacity, cortisol, thyroid hormones, serum metabolomics, porphyrin metabolism, Mongolian ethnoveterinary medicine, ruminant nutrition, oxidative stress

The review, which analysed 72 studies in which tannin extracts or tannin-rich plant materials were added to concentrate or conserved feeds for ruminant animals, found that positive benefits were confirmed in 63 percent of cattle and cow studies and 54 percent of sheep and goat studies. These are not trivial numbers. In a field where feed additives routinely promise more than they deliver, a majority of trials reporting measurable gains for both beef and dairy cattle, as well as small ruminants, suggests that tannin supplementation has moved beyond the anecdotal stage and into the realm of reproducible nutritional intervention.

The mechanisms behind these benefits are chemically elegant. Tannins are polyphenolic compounds that bind proteins and other macromolecules through hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions. In the rumen, this binding capacity can be harnessed rather than feared. By complexing with dietary proteins, tannins can slow the rate of protein degradation by rumen microbes, allowing more dietary protein to bypass ruminal fermentation and reach the small intestine, where it is digested and absorbed with greater efficiency. This shift in nitrogen metabolism reduces the excess ammonia that rumen microbes would otherwise convert and excrete, improving the efficiency with which dietary nitrogen becomes animal product rather than environmental pollutant.

Perhaps the most consequential benefit, however, lies in the rumen’s gas production. Methanogenesis, the microbial process by which archaea in the rumen convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methane, represents both a significant loss of dietary energy and a major source of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Tannins interfere with this process through multiple routes: they can directly inhibit methanogenic archaea, reduce the populations of protozoa that harbour methane-producing microbes in symbiotic association, and shift fermentation patterns toward pathways that produce less hydrogen gas as a by-product. The review identifies reduced methane emissions as one of the most likely benefits of tannin-containing diets for ruminants, a finding with obvious implications for the livestock sector’s climate footprint.

A second major benefit highlighted by the review concerns gut health, specifically the anthelmintic effect that certain tannins exert against gastrointestinal parasites. Condensed tannins in particular have been shown in numerous studies to reduce the establishment and fecundity of parasitic nematodes in the digestive tract of ruminants, offering a potential complementary tool in the face of growing anthelmintic resistance worldwide. For grazing and housed livestock alike, a feed additive that simultaneously improves protein utilisation, curbs methane output and lightens parasite burden represents a rare triple dividend in animal agriculture.

Yet the review is equally instructive about failure. In a substantial minority of ruminant studies, tannin supplementation produced no measurable benefit, and the authors identify several recurring reasons. The ‘wrong’ type or concentration of tannin is a primary culprit: hydrolysable tannins and condensed tannins differ fundamentally in structure and biological activity, and even within these broad classes, molecular weight and galloyl content vary enormously between sources such as chestnut, quebracho and grape pomace. Doses that are too low produce no effect, while doses that are too high can depress feed intake, bind essential nutrients indiscriminately and damage the rumen microbial community itself. An unsuitable combination of tannin type and concentrate composition can also negate any potential benefit, as can the developmental status of the animal, with young, growing or lactating animals responding differently to mature ones.

Another subtle complication arises from the complexity of plant extracts themselves. When tannins are sourced from crude plant by-products rather than purified extracts, the preparation contains a cocktail of other polyphenols, flavonoids, organic acids and residual compounds that may interact with, and in some cases cancel out, the effects of the tannins. The review notes that negation of tannin effects by other compounds in the extract is a recognised reason why some trials fail to reproduce the positive results seen elsewhere. This underscores a broader principle in animal nutrition: the biological activity of a feed additive cannot be predicted from its nominal label alone, but depends on the full chemical context in which it is delivered.

The picture for monogastric animals is considerably less rosy. The review examined 20 studies each for poultry and swine, and the results diverge sharply from the ruminant experience. In poultry, the inclusion of tannins in feed provided little nutritional benefit, although a notable exception emerged in the context of coccidiosis, a devastating intestinal disease caused by protozoal infection. Where coccidiosis severity was measured, tannin supplementation reduced infection, suggesting that the antimicrobial and anti-protozoal properties of tannins may find a targeted niche in poultry health management even where growth and feed efficiency gains are absent.

For pigs, the results were variable to the point of inconsistency. At low inclusion levels, tannin extracts often produced no appreciable influence on performance, while at higher levels they sometimes negatively impacted the nutritive value of the feed, presumably by binding dietary proteins and reducing their digestibility in the small intestine, where monogastric animals lack the ruminal microbial machinery that ruminants can deploy to liberate tannin-bound nutrients. In some cases, however, pig health was improved, hinting that the antimicrobial and antioxidant properties of tannins may still hold value in specific contexts, such as weaning transitions or disease challenge, even when growth benefits are elusive.

The overall conclusion of the review is unambiguous: tannin extracts appear to provide more benefit for ruminants than for monogastrics, particularly poultry. This asymmetry makes biological sense, since the rumen is precisely the environment where tannin chemistry can be exploited to modulate fermentation, protein flow and microbial populations, whereas the simple stomach of a pig or chicken offers fewer opportunities for such manipulation and greater vulnerability to anti-nutritional effects. Looking forward, the authors raise an intriguing question: if tannin supplementation of concentrate feeds continues to prove beneficial, would it be advantageous to breed or engineer the main ingredients of those concentrates, such as maize or soybean, to express tannins natively? Such an approach could embed the benefits directly into the feed matrix, though it would also raise new questions about dose control, digestibility trade-offs and the interaction of endogenous tannins with other feed components. For now, the evidence points to a clear division of labour: tannins belong, first and foremost, in the rations of cattle, sheep and goats, where their capacity to improve protein utilisation, reduce methane emissions and support gut health through anthelmintic action offers livestock producers a natural, plant-derived tool with measurable and multifaceted returns.

Subject of Research: Review of tannin supplementation in concentrate diets for ruminant and monogastric livestock

Article Title: Benefits of tannin added to concentrate diets fed to ruminants and monogastric livestock

Article References: Caradus, J. R. (2026). Benefits of tannin added to concentrate diets fed to ruminants and monogastric livestock. Frontiers in Animal Science, 7, Article 1905042. https://doi.org/10.3389/fanim.2026.1905042

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fanim.2026.1905042

Keywords: tannins, ruminants, cattle, sheep, goats, poultry, swine, methane emissions, gut health, anthelmintic, feed additives, polyphenols

The Cukurova Meat Sheep, abbreviated CMS, is not a product of chance. It was assembled from four genetic streams: 37.5 percent Île de France, 37.5 percent Rambouillet, 12.5 percent Awassi, and 12.5 percent Sakız. The breeding strategy aimed to fuse the superior muscle development and growth performance of European meat-type breeds with the environmental resilience of local Turkish genetics. The Awassi, by contrast, is a fat-tailed breed that has been shaped over centuries in the hot, semi-arid regions of the Middle East. It tolerates high temperatures and humidity, thrives on limited feed, and digests nutrients with notable efficiency, making it a cornerstone of sheep production in southeastern Anatolia and the Mediterranean region. Until now, however, rigorous comparative data on the CMS under standardized conditions have been scarce.

The experimental design was deliberately simple and tightly controlled. Twenty single-born, intact male lambs, ten of each breed, were selected at similar ages and body weights, with Awassi lambs averaging roughly 27.9 kilograms and CMS lambs 27.7 kilograms at the start. The animals were housed in pairs in identical pens, a arrangement chosen to satisfy the strong herding instincts of sheep and minimize stress-related adaptation problems that could skew the data. After a two-week adaptation period during which the concentrate proportion of the diet was gradually increased to protect rumen health, the lambs were fattened for ten weeks on an 80:20 concentrate-to-roughage ration, fed ad libitum alongside alfalfa hay. All lambs were slaughtered on the same day at approximately 175 to 179 days of age, and meat analyses focused on the longissimus lumborum, the prized loin muscle that runs along the spine.

When it came to growth, the two breeds proved remarkably evenly matched. Initial and final live weights showed no statistically significant differences, and average daily gain was essentially the same across both groups. The Awassi lambs did eat more, recording higher daily feed intake, yet this appetite advantage did not translate into faster growth, meaning the CMS lambs achieved equivalent performance on less feed. Feed conversion ratio, the efficiency metric that divides intake by gain, did not differ significantly between breeds, but the pattern hints at the leaner economics of the meat-type composite. An interesting digestive footnote emerged from fecal analysis: Awassi lambs excreted feces with higher acid detergent fiber concentrations, suggesting a greater capacity for fiber utilization, a trait likely rooted in their long evolutionary history of subsisting on coarse roughage in harsh environments.

The carcass story is where the breeds genuinely diverge. Awassi lambs produced heavier hot and cold carcasses, a difference partly attributable to their higher slaughter weights and, crucially, to the tail fat that defines fat-tailed breeds. In the Awassi carcasses, tail fat alone constituted 14.73 percent of cold carcass weight, a substantial energy store with little commercial value in modern meat markets, while no tail fat was detected in the CMS carcasses. Awassi lambs also deposited more omental and mesenteric fat and showed greater fat thickness over the loin muscle, painting a picture of an animal geared toward energy storage. The CMS lambs, meanwhile, carried heavier weights and higher proportions of the forearm, rib, loin, and rump, precisely the regions where premium cuts are carved. The authors caution that because full tissue dissection was not performed, these cut weights cannot be read as direct proof of greater muscle mass, but the pattern is consistent with the breed’s meat-type design.

Physical meat quality, the suite of traits that determine how meat looks, cooks, and feels on the plate, was strikingly similar between the breeds. Postmortem pH values at 24 hours fell within the normal range for lamb, around 5.70 to 5.71, indicating that neither breed produced dark, firm, dry meat or the pale, soft, exudative defect that plagues poorly handled carcasses. Cooking loss, Warner-Bratzler shear force measured on raw loin samples, and the full texture profile analysis of cooked meat, covering hardness, springiness, cohesiveness, chewiness, and resilience, all showed no significant breed differences. The only physical divergence appeared in the chroma value of raw meat, where Awassi samples displayed higher color saturation, suggesting a more vivid red that could catch a shopper’s eye at the butcher’s counter. When the meat was cooked, myoglobin denatured as expected, shifting color toward lighter, browner tones in both breeds equally.

Beneath the surface, however, the chemical composition told a different story. Crude protein content was significantly higher in CMS meat, a difference the author attributes primarily to breed-related differences in muscle composition, possibly compounded by the fat-tailed Awassi’s tendency to divert energy into fat deposition rather than lean tissue. Mineral analysis using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry revealed that CMS meat contained significantly higher concentrations of potassium and magnesium, two intracellular minerals central to neuromuscular function, cellular homeostasis, and energy metabolism, while calcium, copper, iron, sodium, and zinc levels were equivalent between breeds.

The fatty acid and amino acid analyses added further texture to the comparison. Overall fatty acid profiles were similar, an expected outcome given that all lambs consumed the same cereal-based diet and ruminant meat lipids are dominated by dietary and microbial sources processed through ruminal biohydrogenation. One exception stood out: arachidonic acid, an omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid embedded in muscle membrane phospholipids, was significantly higher in CMS meat, a shift the study links to breed-related differences in lipid metabolism and muscle development. Among the 26 amino acids identified, most were present at similar levels, but CMS meat carried significantly more glutamic acid, a key component of myofibrillar proteins and a major contributor to savory umami flavor, and notably more taurine, an amino sulfonic acid involved in muscle energy metabolism and cellular regulation. The absence of detectable omega-3 fatty acids in both breeds reflects the cereal-heavy ration and the extensive biohydrogenation that occurs in the rumen, a reminder that diet, not just genetics, shapes the lipid profile of meat.

The study’s limitations are candidly acknowledged. Twenty lambs from only two sires per breed is a modest sample, feed intake was recorded at the pen level rather than for individual animals, and sensory panels and molecular analyses fell outside the study’s scope. Yet the core message survives these caveats: under identical feeding and management, breed effects in these lambs manifested not in how fast they grew or how tender their meat felt, but in where the carcass carried its value and what its muscle contained. For a livestock sector grappling with rising demand for animal protein, urbanizing consumer markets, and the need to make every kilogram of feed count, the Cukurova Meat Sheep’s combination of leaner carcass composition, more muscle in high-value cuts, and elevated protein, taurine, and arachidonic acid represents a compelling case that targeted crossbreeding can reshape the economics and nutrition of lamb meat without sacrificing the eating quality that consumers expect.

Subject of Research: Comparative growth performance, carcass traits, and meat quality of Awassi and Cukurova Meat Sheep lambs under identical fattening conditions

Article Title: Growth performance, carcass traits, and meat quality of Awassi and Cukurova Meat Sheep lambs

Article References: Durmuş, M. (2026). Growth performance, carcass traits, and meat quality of Awassi and Cukurova Meat Sheep lambs. Archives Animal Breeding, 69(4), 569-583. https://doi.org/10.5194/aab-69-569-2026

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.5194/aab-69-569-2026

Keywords: sheep, lamb meat, Cukurova Meat Sheep, Awassi, carcass traits, meat quality, fattening performance, fatty acids, amino acids, taurine, animal breeding, Türkiye