Toxicity of diclofenac to Gyps vultures |
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Authors: | Swan Gerry E Cuthbert Richard Quevedo Miguel Green Rhys E Pain Deborah J Bartels Paul Cunningham Andrew A Duncan Neil Meharg Andrew A Oaks J Lindsay Parry-Jones Jemima Shultz Susanne Taggart Mark A Verdoorn Gerhard Wolter Kerri |
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Affiliation: | University of Pretoria, Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Onderstepoort 0110, South Africa. |
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Abstract: | Three endemic vulture species Gyps bengalensis, Gyps indicus and Gyps tenuirostris are critically endangered following dramatic declines in South Asia resulting from exposure to diclofenac, a veterinary drug present in the livestock carcasses that they scavenge. Diclofenac is widely used globally and could present a risk to Gyps species from other regions. In this study, we test the toxicity of diclofenac to a Eurasian (Gyps fulvus) and an African (Gyps africanus) species, neither of which is threatened. A dose of 0.8 mg kg(-1) of diclofenac was highly toxic to both species, indicating that they are at least as sensitive to diclofenac as G. bengalensis, for which we estimate an LD50 of 0.1-0.2 mg kg(-1). We suggest that diclofenac is likely to be toxic to all eight Gyps species, and that G. africanus, which is phylogenetically close to G. bengalensis, would be a suitable surrogate for the safety testing of alternative drugs to diclofenac. |
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