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Sugden S, Steckler DK, Sanderson D, Abercrombie B, Abercrombie D, Seguin MA, Ford K, St. Clair CC. Age-dependent relationships among diet, body condition, and Echinococcus multilocularis infection in urban coyotes. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0290755. [PMID: 37647321 PMCID: PMC10468061 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290755] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/02/2023] [Accepted: 08/14/2023] [Indexed: 09/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Urban coyotes (Canis latrans) in North America increasingly exhibit a high prevalence of Echinococcus multilocularis, a cestode of recent and rising public health concern that uses rodents as intermediate hosts and canids as definitive hosts. However, little is known about the factors that drive the high urban prevalence of this parasite. We hypothesized that the diet of urban coyotes may contribute to their higher E. multilocularis infection prevalence via either (a) greater exposure to the parasite from increased rodent consumption or (b) increased susceptibility to infection due to the negative health effects of consuming anthropogenic food. We tested these hypotheses by comparing the presence and intensity of E. multilocularis infection to physiological data (age, sex, body condition, and spleen mass), short-term diet (stomach contents), and long-term diet (δ13C and δ15N stable isotopes) in 112 coyote carcasses collected for reasons other than this study from Edmonton, Alberta and the surrounding area. Overall, the best predictor of infection status in this population was young age, where the likelihood of infection decreased with age in rural coyotes but not urban ones. Neither short- nor long-term measures of diet could predict infection across our entire sample, but we found support for our initial hypotheses in young, urban coyotes: both rodent and anthropogenic food consumption effectively predicted E. multilocularis infection in this population. The effects of these predictors were more variable in rural coyotes and older coyotes. We suggest that limiting coyote access to areas in which anthropogenic food and rodent habitat overlap (e.g., compost piles or garbage sites) may effectively reduce the risk of infection, deposition, and transmission of this emerging zoonotic parasite in urban areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Scott Sugden
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
- Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, Canada
| | - Deanna K. Steckler
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
| | - Dana Sanderson
- Department of Biological Sciences, MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
| | - Bill Abercrombie
- Animal Damage Control, Bushman Inc., Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada
| | | | - M. Alexis Seguin
- IDEXX Laboratories, Inc., Westbrook, Maine, United States of America
| | - Kyra Ford
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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Urban-adapted mammal species have more known pathogens. Nat Ecol Evol 2022; 6:794-801. [PMID: 35501480 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-022-01723-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2021] [Revised: 02/23/2022] [Accepted: 03/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
The world is rapidly urbanizing, inviting mounting concern that urban environments will experience increased zoonotic disease risk. Urban animals could have more frequent contact with humans, therefore transmitting more zoonotic parasites; however, this relationship is complicated by sampling bias and phenotypic confounders. Here we test whether urban mammal species host more zoonotic parasites, investigating the underlying drivers alongside a suite of phenotypic, taxonomic and geographic predictors. We found that urban-adapted mammals have more documented parasites and more zoonotic parasites: despite comprising only 6% of investigated species, urban mammals provided 39% of known host-parasite combinations. However, contrary to predictions, much of the observed effect was attributable to parasite discovery and research effort rather than to urban adaptation status, and urban-adapted species in fact hosted fewer zoonotic parasites than expected on the basis of their total parasite richness. We conclude that extended historical contact with humans has had a limited impact on zoonotic parasite richness in urban-adapted mammals; instead, their greater observed zoonotic richness probably reflects sampling bias arising from proximity to humans, supporting a near-universal conflation between zoonotic risk, research effort and synanthropy. These findings underscore the need to resolve the mechanisms linking anthropogenic change, sampling bias and observed wildlife disease dynamics.
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Becker DJ, Teitelbaum CS, Murray MH, Curry SE, Welch CN, Ellison T, Adams HC, Rozier RS, Lipp EK, Hernandez SM, Altizer S, Hall RJ. Assessing the contributions of intraspecific and environmental sources of infection in urban wildlife: Salmonella enterica and white ibis as a case study. J R Soc Interface 2018; 15:20180654. [PMID: 30958239 PMCID: PMC6303792 DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2018.0654] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2018] [Accepted: 11/15/2018] [Indexed: 01/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Conversion of natural habitats into urban landscapes can expose wildlife to novel pathogens and alter pathogen transmission pathways. Because transmission is difficult to quantify for many wildlife pathogens, mathematical models paired with field observations can help select among competing transmission pathways that might operate in urban landscapes. Here we develop a mathematical model for the enteric bacteria Salmonella enterica in urban-foraging white ibis ( Eudocimus albus) in south Florida as a case study to determine (i) the relative importance of contact-based versus environmental transmission among ibis and (ii) whether transmission can be supported by ibis alone or requires external sources of infection. We use biannual field prevalence data to restrict model outputs generated from a Latin hypercube sample of parameter space and select among competing transmission scenarios. We find the most support for transmission from environmental uptake rather than between-host contact and that ibis-ibis transmission alone could maintain low infection prevalence. Our analysis provides the first parameter estimates for Salmonella shedding and uptake in a wild bird and provides a key starting point for predicting how ibis response to urbanization alters their exposure to a multi-host zoonotic enteric pathogen. More broadly, our study provides an analytical roadmap to assess transmission pathways of multi-host wildlife pathogens in the face of scarce infection data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel J. Becker
- Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Center for the Ecology of Infectious Disease, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
| | - Claire S. Teitelbaum
- Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Center for the Ecology of Infectious Disease, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - Maureen H. Murray
- Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - Shannon E. Curry
- Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - Catharine N. Welch
- Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - Taylor Ellison
- Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - Henry C. Adams
- Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - R. Scott Rozier
- Department of Environmental Health Science, College of Public Health, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - Erin K. Lipp
- Department of Environmental Health Science, College of Public Health, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - Sonia M. Hernandez
- Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - Sonia Altizer
- Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Center for the Ecology of Infectious Disease, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
| | - Richard J. Hall
- Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Center for the Ecology of Infectious Disease, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
- Department of Infectious Disease, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
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