Animals

Locusta migratoria manilensis (Meyen) is a highly destructive insect pest worldwide. However, excessive reliance on insecticides has resulted in significant environmental pollution. Biocontrol complexes combine two or more BCAs to address the limitations of individual agents. However, biocontrol complex for locust control has been rarely reported. Here, we propose BioControl 3.0, which integrates Metarhizium anisopliae var. acridum (Driver and Milner) and Carabus smaragdinus (Fischer von Waldheim) for locust control. We evaluated this system through a series of laboratory bioassays and semi-field cage experiments, comparing single-agent applications, sequential combinations (BioControl 2.0), and predator-mediated delivery (BioControl 3.0), and quantified locust mortality and interaction effects between predation and infection We found that M. anisopliae caused >85% mortality of locust nymphs at 1 × 10⁸ conidia/mL (LT₅₀ ≈ 6 days) while exhibiting negligible virulence toward C. smaragdinus. BioControl 2.0 (sequential application) increased mortality compared to single agents. However, this approach revealed a significant negative interaction between predation and infection, which limited the total control efficacy. BioControl 3.0 (predator-vectored fungus) achieved the highest corrected mortality, with predation and infection acting independently and additively (no detectable antagonistic interaction). By leveraging a predatory vector, BioControl 3.0 decouples negative interaction and harnesses dual biotic pressures, offering a cost-effective, environmentally benign alternative to conventional locust control. Our findings provide a blueprint for designing integrated predator-pathogen complexes and optimizing deployment strategies for sustainable management of locust outbreaks.

The temperature at the base of the ear is highly correlated with the core body temperature of sheep and responds sensitively to febrile conditions, making it a valuable indicator of sheep health. In northern China, the closed housing environment during winter increases the incidence of seasonal diseases such as upper respiratory infections and pneumonia, which severely affect the economic efficiency of sheep farming. To address this issue, this study proposes an early-warning method for winter diseases in sheep based on ear-base temperature. Ear temperature, body weight, and environmental data were collected, and Random Forest was employed for feature selection. Bayesian optimization was used to fine-tune the hyperparameters of a one-dimensional convolutional neural network to construct a predictive model of ear-base temperature using data from healthy sheep. Based on the predicted normal range, an early-warning strategy was established to detect abnormal temperature patterns associated with disease onset. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method achieved a high detection rate for common winter diseases while maintaining a low false positive rate, and validation experiments confirmed its effectiveness under practical farming conditions. Combined with low-cost temperature-sensing ear tags, the proposed approach enables real-time health monitoring and provides timely early warnings for winter diseases in large-scale sheep farming, thereby improving management efficiency and economic performance.

The objective of this study was to determine if the use of human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) and ketoprofen would affect the pregnancy percentages of dairy cows following timed artificial insemination (TAI). This experiment was conducted on a commercial dairy farm in China involving 799 healthy Holstein cows (2–4 parities) between October and December 2024. Cows were randomly assigned to three groups: hCG-3 = treated with (0 d: GnRH, 100 μg; 7–8 d: PGF_2α, 0.4 mg; 52 h: GnRH, 100 μg; 14–16 h: TAI) + hCG 3 vials (300 µg)/cow on day 7 of TAI; hCG-2 group = TAI + 2 vials (200 µg) hCG/cow on day 7; and hCG+ketoprofen = TAI + 300 µg hCG/cow + ketoprofen 10 mL/cow on days 15 and 16 of TAI. Metabolomic profiling (untargeted and targeted) of 22 pregnant cows was conducted on serum collected on days 17 and 21 post-TAI. Results indicated greater pregnancy percentages in the cows of the hCG+ketoprofen-treated group compared to those in the other two groups (60.1% compared with 49.6% and 41.9%). The cows treated with hCG+ketoprofen had less oxidative stress markers, downregulation of arachidonic acid metabolism and upregulation of glycerophospholipid metabolism on day 17 after TAI, indicating that there was upregulation of tryptophan and serotonergic pathways, increased amino acid metabolism and continued anti-inflammatory effects on day 21 after TAI. These findings were confirmed by evaluation data collected by conducting the targeted metabolomic procedures, as indicated by the greater progesterone and melatonin and lesser 17-estradiol and 21-deoxycortisol concentrations. These findings indicate that combined hCG+ketoprofen administrations following the TAI treatment regimen improve pregnancy percentages in dairy cattle as a result of metabolic and endocrine milieu modulations.