Ornithobacterium rhinotracheale (ORT) has been considered exotic to New Zealand and thus, any samples from poultry suspected of ORT infection are submitted as part of an exotic disease investigation managed by Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and subjected to standardized test protocols carried out in the physical containment level 3+ laboratory at MPI's Animal Health Laboratory (AHL). All previous exotic disease investigations concerning ORT produced negative results by bacterial culture and conventional PCR. Following the recent introduction of a real-time PCR for ORT at the AHL, several tracheal wash fluids from backyard chickens ( Gallus gallus domesticus ) were tested positive. This identification constituted the first detection of ORT in New Zealand poultry. As a result, a second premise was investigated with further samples testing positive for ORT by molecular assays. This paper describes the two exotic disease investigations associated with the first detection of ORT in New Zealand poultry and its implications.

The common pasture earthworm Aporrectodea caliginosa has often been neglected in environmental metabolomics in favor of species easily bred in the laboratory. The present study assigns aqueous metabolites in A. caliginosa using high-resolution 1- and 2-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. In total, 51 aqueous metabolites were identified, including typical amino acids (alanine, leucine, asparagine, phenylalanine), sugars (maltose, glucose), the dominant earthworm-specific 2-hexyl-5-ethyl-furansulfonate, and several previously unreported metabolites (oxoglutarate, putrescine). Examining the lesser-known earthworm lipid metabolome showed various lipid fatty acyl chains, cholesterol, and phosphatidylcholine. To briefly test if the NMR metabolomic techniques could differentiate A. caliginosa from different sites, earthworms were collected from 2 adjacent farms. Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis detected metabolomic differences, suggesting the worms from the 2 sites differed in their energy metabolism, as indicated by altered levels of alanine, glutamine, glutamate, malate, fumarate, and lipids. Evidence of greater utilization of lipid energy reserves and onset of protein catabolism was also present. While the precise cause of the metabolomic differences could not be determined, the results show the potential of this species for further environmental metabolomic studies.