Kistler Whitney M, Parlos Julie A, Peper Steven T, Dunham Nicholas R, Kendall Ronald J
The Wildlife Toxicology Laboratory, The Institute of Environmental and Human Health, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2016 Nov 28;11(11):e0166309. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0166309. eCollection 2016.
Oxyspirura petrowi is a parasitic nematode that infects wild birds. This parasite has a broad host range, but has recently been reported in high prevalences from native Galliformes species in the United States. In order to better understand the impact O. petrowi has on wild bird populations, we developed a quantitative PCR protocol to detect infections in wild northern bobwhites (Colinus virginianus). We used paired fecal and cloacal swab samples from wild caught and experimentally infected northern bobwhites and matching fecal float data from experimentally infected birds to validate our assay. Overall we detected more positive birds from fecal samples than the paired cloacal swabs and there was strong agreement between the qPCR results from fecal samples and from fecal flotation (84%; κ = 0.69 [0.53-0.84 95% CI]). We also detected O. petrowi DNA in ten replicates of samples spiked with one O. petrowi egg. This qPCR assay is an effective assay to detect O. petrowi infections in wild birds. Our results suggest that fecal samples are the most appropriate sample for detecting infections; although, cloacal swabs can be useful for determining if O. petrowi is circulating in a population.
彼得罗维氏尖旋尾线虫是一种感染野生鸟类的寄生线虫。这种寄生虫宿主范围广泛，但最近在美国本土鸡形目物种中被报道有很高的感染率。为了更好地了解彼得罗维氏尖旋尾线虫对野生鸟类种群的影响，我们开发了一种定量PCR方法来检测野生北部 bobwhite（弗吉尼亚鹑）的感染情况。我们使用了从野生捕获和实验感染的北部 bobwhite 采集的配对粪便和泄殖腔拭子样本，以及来自实验感染鸟类的匹配粪便漂浮数据来验证我们的检测方法。总体而言，我们从粪便样本中检测到的阳性鸟类比配对的泄殖腔拭子更多，并且粪便样本的qPCR结果与粪便漂浮结果之间有很强的一致性（84%；κ = 0.69 [0.53 - 0.84 95% CI]）。我们还在添加了一个彼得罗维氏尖旋尾线虫卵的样本的十个重复样本中检测到了该线虫的DNA。这种qPCR检测方法是检测野生鸟类中彼得罗维氏尖旋尾线虫感染的有效方法。我们的结果表明，粪便样本是检测感染的最合适样本；不过，泄殖腔拭子对于确定彼得罗维氏尖旋尾线虫是否在种群中传播可能有用。
