School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA.
Graduate Program in Ecology and Conservation, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil.
Transbound Emerg Dis. 2022 Sep;69(5):e2318-e2328. doi: 10.1111/tbed.14575. Epub 2022 May 10.
Poxviruses (family: Poxviridae) infect many avian species, causing several disease outcomes, the most common of which are proliferative lesions on the legs, feet, and/or head. Few avian studies of poxvirus to date have combined molecular and ecological analyses to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the identity and distribution of the disease in a population. Here, we describe patterns of poxvirus infection in an urban population of house finches (Haemorhous mexicanus) in Arizona (USA) and use high-throughput sequencing to determine the genome sequence of the virus. We found that poxvirus prevalence, based on visual identification of pox lesions, was 7.2% (17 infected birds out of a total of 235 sampled) in our population during summer 2021. Disease severity was low; 14 of the 17 infected birds had a single small lesion on the skin overlaying the eye, leg, and ear canal. All but two lesions were found on the feet; one bird had a lesion on the eye and the other in the ear opening. We also investigated possible temporal (i.e., date of capture) and biological correlates (e.g., age, sex, body condition, degree of infection with coccidian endoparasites) of poxvirus infection in urban-caught house finches during this time but found that none of these significantly correlated with poxvirus presence/absence. Two complete poxvirus genomes were determined from two infected birds. These genomes are ∼354,000 bp and share 99.7% similarity with each other, and 82% with a canarypox virus genome, the most closely related avipoxvirus. This novel finchpox virus is the first to be reported in house finches and has a similar genome organization to other avipoxviruses.
痘病毒（科：痘病毒科）感染多种禽类，导致多种疾病结果，最常见的是腿部、脚部和/或头部的增生性病变。迄今为止，对禽类痘病毒的研究很少结合分子和生态分析，以更全面地了解该疾病在种群中的特征和分布。在这里，我们描述了亚利桑那州（美国）城市圈养的家雀（Haemorhous mexicanus）中的痘病毒感染模式，并使用高通量测序来确定病毒的基因组序列。我们发现，在 2021 年夏季，我们的研究群体中，基于痘病变的视觉识别，痘病毒的流行率为 7.2%（235 只采样鸟中有 17 只感染）。疾病严重程度较低；17 只感染鸟中有 14 只有眼部、腿部和耳道皮肤覆盖的单个小病变。除了两个病变外，所有病变都位于脚部；一只鸟的病变在眼部，另一只在耳部开口处。我们还研究了在此期间城市捕获的家雀中痘病毒感染的可能的时间（即捕获日期）和生物学相关性（例如，年龄、性别、身体状况、球虫内寄生虫感染程度），但发现这些因素均与痘病毒的存在与否无显著相关性。从两只感染鸟中确定了两个完整的痘病毒基因组。这些基因组约为 354000bp，彼此之间的相似度为 99.7%，与金丝雀痘病毒基因组的相似度为 82%，金丝雀痘病毒是最接近的禽痘病毒。这种新型雀痘病毒是首次在家雀中报道的，其基因组结构与其他禽痘病毒相似。
