Clinical infection by Francisella tularensis ssp. holarctica in stranded beluga whales from Cook Inlet, Alaska.

We report the first cases of tularemia in a cetacean in two dead stranded beluga whales.Lesions included pleuritis, necrosuppurative bronchopneumonia, hepatitis and lymphadenitis.Francisella tularensis was detected by nanopore metagenomics, confirmed by qPCR andcharacterized as ssp. holarctica by multilocus sequence typing.Authors:Natalie Rouse, Jeremy Buttler , Kristy Pablionia , Christina Weller, Laurel Respicio-Kingry,Elizabeth Dietrich, Jeannine Petersen, Ganna Kovalenko, Eric Bortz, Kathy Burek-Huntington