The commercial feed additive, native rumen microbes (RC), derived from a diverse microbial community isolated from the rumen of Hanwoo steers is being explored to enhance rumen fermentation and improve ruminant feed utilization. This study evaluated the impact of native rumen microbes supplementation on methane emissions, microbial diversity, and fermentation efficiency on in vitro assessment. Treatments were as follows: CON (basal diet, without RC); T1 (basal diet + 0.1% RC); T2 (basal diet + 0.2% RC). Rumen fermentation parameters, total gas, and methane production were assessed at 12, 24, and 48 h of incubations. The in vitro gas production was carried out using the Ankom RF Gas Production System. Supplementation of RC significantly reduced the total gas production at 12, 24, and 48 hours of incubation (p < 0.05). Volatile fatty acid concentrations were increased, while acetate and propionate were decreased (p < 0.05) at 48 h by the supplementation of RC. Notably, the 0.1% inclusion level of RC significantly reduced methane production by 28.30% and 21.21% at 12 and 24 hours. Furthermore, microbial diversity analysis revealed significant shifts (p < 0.05) in bacterial composition between the control and treatment groups, while supplementation also promoted the growth of bacterial populations, such as Succiniclasticum. These findings suggest that native rumen microbes supplementation, particularly at 0.1% inclusion level, can enhance rumen microbial composition while significantly reducing methane production in vitro.

A 13-year-old female lion underwent a simple mastectomy for a rapidly growing abdominal mass, confirmed as mammary adenocarcinoma after histopathological examination. Mammary tumors are common in domestic cats but less frequently reported in African lions. This report presents the first documented case of mammary adenocarcinoma in an African lion in South Korea. The mass was successfully excised through stable anesthesia and surgery. This report adds to the limited literature on mammary tumors in large felids and discusses the need for tailored management strategies.

Caprine cryptosporidiosis mainly occurs in young goats, with morbidity rates of 80%–100% and mortality over 50% in goat kids. However, limited research has been conducted on the impact of Cryptosporidium parvum, a diarrhea-causing pathogen, on the intestinal microbiota of goat kids. In this study, 16S rRNA-based metataxonomic analysis was performed to compare the microbial diversity and abundance of the gut microbiota between C. parvum-infected and uninfected goat kids. In total, 12 goat fecal samples were collected, including seven naturally C. parvum-infected and five uninfected goats from Chungcheongbuk-do, Korea. After amplification of the V3–V4 hypervariable region of the bacterial 16S rRNA, high-throughput sequencing was performed. The results showed differences in the microbial composition between C. parvum-infected and uninfected groups based on beta diversity. Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were the most dominant phyla in both groups. However, no significant difference was observed in the Bacteroidetes/Firmicutes ratio between the two groups. Compared with the uninfected group, the C. parvum-infected group showed significantly higher abundances of Tyzzerella nexillis, Lactobacillus johnsonii, Butyricicoccus pullicaecorum, Enterococcus raffinosus, Enterococcus faecalis, and Negativicoccus massiliensis, and significantly reduced abundances of Aerococcus vaginalis, Faecalicoccus pleomorphus, Oribacterium parvum, and Coprococcus comes. These findings indicate that C. parvum infection, which is associated with diarrhea in neonatal goats, induces alterations in the caprine gut microbiota.

Calonecrinae represent a unique but small subfamily of Nitidulidae that is endemic to South Asia. Their habitats, the South Asian lowland forests, are under the imminent threat of degradation, posing a risk of rapid extinction for these species in their specific locales. Despite the looming threat to their existence, our understanding of this enigmatic group remains limited. We conducted an examination of museum and newly collected specimens, alongside a review of the literature, leading to the discovery of a new species, Calonecrus mindanaoensis, from Mindanao, Philippines. For the first time, the morphology of all immature stages of the Calonecrinae was described, with detailed photographs including SEM images. Additionally, their natural history was uncovered for the first time, revealing that all life stages are uniquely adapted to spending their entire life cycle within sticky resin. We re-evaluated the phylogenetic placement of the Calonecrinae by constructing a phylogenetic tree based on the mitochondrial genome. Calonecrinae are positioned within the Epuraeinae clade and show significant affinity with the genus Trimenus. Consequently, this study proposes reclassifying Calonecrinae as Calonecrini stat nov, an extremely modified tribe within the Epuraeinae.

Pine Wilt Disease (PWD) is a disease causing mass deaths of pine trees in South Korea, and the dead trees serve as breeding grounds for insect vectors responsible for spreading the disease to other host trees. Because the PWD requires early monitoring to minimize its damage on domestic forestry, this study aims to develop a species distribution model for predicting the potential distribution of PWD by using artificial neural network (ANN) with time-series data. Among the architectures, the Convolutional Neural Network exhibited the highest performance, achieving a validation accuracy of 0.854 and a cross-entropy loss of 0.401, and the InceptionTime model emerged as the second-best performer. This study identified the best-performing ANN architecture for a spatiotemporal evaluation of PWD occurrence, emphasizing the importance for determining hyperparameters with ecological characteristics and data types to apply deep learning into SDMs.

The aphid genus Macromyzus Takahashi is a small East-Asia genus of the tribe Macrosiphini (Hemiptera: Aphidinae). Globally, there are five recognized species: Macromyzus (Anthracosiphoniella) maculatus (Basu), Macromyzus (Macromyzus) indicus David & Narayanan, M. (M.) manoji Raha & Raychaudhuri, M. (M.) spinosus Su & Qiao, and M. (M.) woodwardiae (Takahashi). In this study, we report the first record of the aphid genus Macromyzus Takahashi in Laos. We present a decription of a new species of this genus associated with Diplazium esculentum (Retz.) Sw. (Athyriaceae). Additionally, for the first time, we conducted scanning electron microscopy research on the morphology and sensilla of representative of this genus.

The aphid genus Tuberaphis Takahashi belongs to the tribe Cerataphdini (Hemiptera: Hormaphidinae) and comprises 17 valid species. Generally, its species are distributed in East and South East Asia, where they primarily feed on Styrax spp. (Styracaceae) and utilize species within the Loranthaceae family as their secondary hosts. They form various shapes of galls on Styrax, looking coral and broccoli etc. Currently, the only aphid species reported to exclusively produce gall forms resembling broccoli head-shaped is Tuberaphis takeouchii (Takahashi). For the first time in Korea, an aphid species forming gall structures with a broccoli-head-like appearance has been discovered. We confirmed that the species discovered in Korea is a new species through morphological and molecular comparisons with T. takenouchii (Takahashi). To comprehend the life cycle of this new species, we conducted a year-long study investigating how the gall forms change and examined aphid polymorphism across different seasons. The results of this study additionally include as followings: 1) Species identification, 2) DNA barcoding, 3) population genetic analyses, and 4) morphological comparison using SEM