Veterinary Science in Action: How Zoo and Aquarium Animals Are Diagnosed and Cured

Dear Colleagues,

Zoo and aquatic animal medicine has significantly evolved in the past 20 years; however, the challenges of providing medical care and optimizing welfare persist. Zoo and aquarium residents continue to break longevity records but can hide disease and discomfort until they are past the stage where treatment could be rewarding. Training for veterinary procedures can broaden the opportunities to detect earlier disease states, but limitations with this diagnostic strategy still exist. Clinical signs are often non-specific, and achieving a diagnosis requires physical or chemical immobilization of a compromised animal. Newer technologies are now routinely utilized to diagnose diseases in zoo and aquarium animals. Increasing numbers of facilities have the capability to perform computed tomography in-house. Molecular techniques such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and next-generation sequencing (NGS) have revolutionized veterinary medicine in their ability to detect infectious diseases. In addition, more zoo and aquatic medicine textbooks and resources are available now than ever before. Still, many questions remain unanswered. Once a diagnosis is reached, successfully implementing a treatment plan presents a new suite of challenges. These patients are intelligent and sometimes cunning. They will carefully examine and subsequently discard food items “tainted” with medication, and some live in a saltwater environment that promptly dissipates any relevant topical treatment. Successful drug delivery requires an extraordinary level of ingenuity from veterinaries, keepers, and aquarist teams working closely in conjunction. The scope of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of different diagnostic and treatment challenges alongside new modalities available to overcome them in zoo and aquarium animals. Experiences with techniques previously described in the literature will be shared, along with those that have not. This Special Issue will present the different approaches used to manage the large diversity of species encountered in zoos and aquariums throughout the world.

The editors of this Special Issue, “Veterinary Science in Action: How Zoo and Aquarium Animals Are Diagnosed and Cured”, invite you to submit your relevant research manuscripts for review. The focus of this Special Issue is to provide veterinarians, technicians, keepers, aquarists, and people working in aquarium and zoological collections with an overview of the challenges and opportunities in diagnosing and treating animals in their care. We expect to gain perspectives from colleagues in different geographic locations and in different financial, social, and even political contexts. This issue aims to gather published and experiential information that may not have been described in the existing literature that could be useful to other colleagues.

Dr. Carlos Sánchez
Dr. Richard Sim
Dr. Josie Rose
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Zoological and Botanical Gardens is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• aquarium
• diagnosis
• treatment
• animal welfare
• zoos
• advanced imaging
• molecular diagnostics