Cetacean Morbillivirus in Coastal Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins, Western Australia

Abstract

Cetacean morbillivirus (CeMV) has caused several epizootics in multiple species of cetaceans globally and is an emerging disease among cetaceans in Australia. We detected CeMV in 2 stranded coastal Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in Western Australia. Preliminary phylogenetic data suggest that this virus variant is divergent from known strains.

Keywords

• Australia
• cetacean
• common bottlenose dolphin
• dolphin
• epizootic
• gene amplification