Vibrio Carchariae As A Pathogen Of Summer Flounder (Paralicthys dentatus)       Eric Gauger and Marta Gómez-Chiarri   Department of Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881.     Vibrio carchariae is a recently identified bacterial pathogen of summer flounder (Paralicthys dentatus). As such, little is known about the etiology of the disease, which has been given the name Flounder Infectious Necrotizing Enteritis (FINE).  Previous work on the disease focused on identification of the pathogen, description of clinical and histological signs and determination of a LD 50 at one temperature using intraperitoneal injection. We are currently: 1) investigating the role of temperature and transport stress on disease initiation and severity; and 2) developing molecular tools for the rapid diagnosis of FINE. Disease challenges were conducted at 20, 22 and 24 deg. C., using intraperitoneal injection.  No significant differences in the LD 50 value were seen over this temperature range. Challenges where the route of infection directly bypassed the primary epithelial barriers (intraperitoneal injection and intramuscular injection) were able to initiate infections under all test conditions.  In challenges where the route of infection did not directly bypass epithelial barriers (intestinal intubation, gastric intubation, immersion and cohabitation) a combination of high stocking density and a simulated transport stress were required to initiate infections.  These results indicate that transport stress may play an important role in triggering epizootics.  With the goal of developing specific diagnostic tools for V. carchariae, we have sequenced a fragment of the 16S rRNA from different strains of Vibrio harveyi/carchariae isolated from several marine fish species.  Our results indicate that diagnostic tools based on amplification of a specific fragment of the 16S rRNA gene would allow to distinguish between strains of Vibrio harveyi or Vibrio carchariae that are undistinguishable using diagnostic tools such as biochemical profiles (API20E).