Assessing the feasibility of fly based surveillance of wildlife infectious diseases.

ABSTRACT: Monitoring wildlife infectious agents requires acquiring samples suitable for analyses, which is often logistically demanding. A possible alternative to invasive or non-invasive sampling of wild-living vertebrates is the use of vertebrate material contained in invertebrates feeding on them, their feces, or their remains. Carrion flies have been shown to contain vertebrate DNA; here we investigate whether they might also be suitable for wildlife pathogen detection. We collected 498 flies in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, a tropical rainforest and examined them for adenoviruses (family Adenoviridae), whose DNA is frequently shed in feces of local mammals. Adenoviral DNA was detected in 6/142 mammal-positive flies. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that five of these sequences were closely re

SUBMITTER: Hoffmann C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5128827 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature