The ornamental fish trade has been considered as one of the most important routes of invasive alien fish introduction into native freshwater ecosystems. Therefore, the species composition and invasion risks of fish species from 60 freshwater fish pet stores in Klang Valley, Malaysia were studied. A checklist of taxa belonging to 18 orders, 53 families, and 251 species of alien fishes was documented. Fish Invasiveness Screening Test (FIST) showed that seven (30.43%), eight (34.78%) and eight (34.78%) species were considered to be high, medium and low invasion risks, respectively. After the calibration of the Fish Invasiveness Screening Kit (FISK) v2 using the Receiver Operating Characteristics, a threshold value of 17 for distinguishing between invasive and non-invasive fishes was identified. As a result, nine species (39.13%) were of high invasion risk. In this study, we found that non-native fishes dominated (85.66%) the freshwater ornamental trade in Klang Valley, while FISK is a more robust tool in assessing the risk of invasion, and for the most part, its outcome was commensurate with FIST. This study, for the first time, revealed the number of high-risk ornamental fish species that give an awareness of possible future invasion if unmonitored in Klang Valley, Malaysia.
Bacteriological isolation and identification were performed on 60 cloacal swabs and 15 aquarium water samples of pet red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans) obtained from aquarium shops in the Klang Valley, Central Peninsula Malaysia. The most common bacteria isolated was Aeromonas spp., which was present in both cloacal swabs (70%) and aquarium water (86.7%). Klebsiella spp. (50%), Escherichia coli (33.3%), Yersinia spp. (16.7%) and Salmonella spp. (15%) obtained form cloacal swabs were identified as pathogenic to both humans and animals. Salmonella spp. were isolated from both cloacal swabs and aquarium water. The Salmonella serotypes identified were S. tennessee, S. typhimurium, S. brezany, S. pomona, S. corvallis and S. schwarzengrund. Bacterial infections in humans associated with handling exotic pets directly or indirectly in contact with aquarium water have been described regularly, hence the zoonotic significance of owning a turtle infected with Salmonella spp. or any pathogenic bacteria therefore cannot be ignored.
A vast proportion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) individuals remain asymptomatic and can shed severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV) type 2 virus to transmit the infection, which also explains the exponential increase in the number of COVID-19 cases globally. Furthermore, the rate of recovery from clinical COVID-19 in certain pockets of the globe is surprisingly high. Based on published reports and available literature, here, we speculated a few immunovirological mechanisms as to why a vast majority of individuals remain asymptomatic similar to exotic animal (bats and pangolins) reservoirs that remain refractile to disease development despite carrying a huge load of diverse insidious viral species, and whether such evolutionary advantage would unveil therapeutic strategies against COVID-19 infection in humans. Understanding the unique mechanisms that exotic animal species employ to achieve viral control, as well as inflammatory regulation, appears to hold key clues to the development of therapeutic versatility against COVID-19.