Innovative wireless heart monitor to assess health in bivalves

Le Viet Dung

Andrea C. Alfaro

Nick King

Norman L. C. Ragg

Zoë Hilton

Oyster farm & nursery

Oyster mortality outbreak

Whittington et al. 2014

Oyster’s “revolution”

Do you hear the oysters sing?

Singing the song of stressy ones?

It is the music of the oysters

Who will not be alive for long!

When the beating of oyster’s heart

Echoes the beating of the drama.

There is a tragedy about to start

When tomorrow comes.

What’s missing?

Cardiac activity as a external stress biomarker

Cardiac activity as a health biomarker

Heart rate ~ metabolic rate

Heart rate ~ exercise

Brand & Roberts, 1973; Cândido & Romero, 2006

How to measure heart rate of bivalves?

Impedance method

Ragg et al. 2010

Multiple mussels

Ragg et al. 2010

Geoduck

Le et al. 2014

Infrared method

Pautsina et al., 2014

Crustaceans

Rasmus Ern et al. 2014; www.esep.umces.edu

Gastropods

www.sense-t.org.au/; http://canmove.lu.se/

Bivalves

http://gogreenstaygreen.com/; Le et al. 2014

Geoduck’s heart rate

Le et al. 2014

Impedance vs. Infrared

Impedance

Invasive

Short periods of real-time monitoring (minutes)

Any shell thickness

Simple signal

Laboratory

Infrared

Non-invasive

Long periods of real-time monitoring (months)

Thin shell thickness

Complex signal

Laboratory & field potential

Tony Stark: I think I would just cut the wire!

Andrewartha et al. 2014; Hellicar et al., 2015

Heart Rate & Heart Rate Variability ~ Stress

Sasha Saunders, Honours student, 2011

Rest Stress

Data processing & analysis

Hellicar et al., 2015

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Data processing & analysis

Le et al. unpublished

Implications of wireless heart monitor

Physiological & physical responses

Disease/stress detection

Phenotypic responses incorporated with gene responses

Pollution monitoring

Climate change

Husbandry & farm management

Selective breeding