An international team of researchers has identified a new virus that attacks wild and farmed tilapia.
In work published this week in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, the team clearly shows that the Tilapia Lake Virus (TiLV) was the culprit behind mass tilapia die-offs that occurred in Ecuador and Israel in recent years. The work also provides a foundation for developing a vaccine to protect fish from TiLV.
In 2009, both wild tilapia species in Kinneret Lake, also known as the Sea of Galilee, and fish in commercial ponds in Israel began suffering from an unknown disease with high rates of mortality of up to 70 percent.
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