The story of invasive algae, arginine, and turtle tumors does not make sense

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1 U.S. Geological Survey, National Wildlife Health Center, Honolulu Field Station, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
2 Institute of Virology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
3 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
4 Ecological Modelling Services Pty Ltd, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia
5 Department of Pathology and Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, USA
6 National Institute of Standards and Technology, Hollings Marine Laboratory, Charleston, South Carolina, USA
7 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Office of Protected Resources, Gainesville, Florida, USA
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.539v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Conservation Biology, Ecology, Marine Biology, Veterinary Medicine, Virology
Keywords
Green turtle, Chelonia mydas, Arginine, Eutrophication, Herpesvirus, Fibropapillomatosis, Nutrient pollution, Alien algae, Coastal ecology, Wastewater
Copyright
© 2014 Work et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Work TM, Ackermann M, Casey JW, Chaloupka M, Herbst L, Lynch JM, Stacy BA. 2014. The story of invasive algae, arginine, and turtle tumors does not make sense. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e539v1

Abstract

We are presenting a rebuttal letter to the following article that appeared recently on PeerJ: Van Houtan KS, Smith CM, Dailer ML, and Kawachi M. 2014. Eutrophication and the dietary promotion of sea turtle tumors. PeerJ 2:e602. This article is available at the following URL: https://peerj.com/articles/602/. We argue that the article lacks an inferential framework to answer the complex question regarding the drivers of the turtle tumor disease fibropapillomatosis in Hawaii. The article also contains procedural flaws and does not provide any compelling evidence of a link between algae, arginine, and turtle tumors.

Author Comment

We are presenting a rebuttal letter to the following PeerJ article: Van Houtan KS, Smith CM, Dailer ML, and Kawachi M. 2014. Eutrophication and the dietary promotion of sea turtle tumors. PeerJ 2:e602.