Fasciolosis in cattle in Louisiana. II. Development of a system to use soil maps in a geographic information system to estimate disease risk on Louisiana coastal marsh rangeland.

A geographic information system (GIS) model of habitat for Lymnaea bulimoides, the snail intermediate host of Fasciola hepatica and the rumen fluke, Calicophoron microbothrioides, on the Chenier Plain of southwest Louisiana was revised to incorporate broad (greater than 100 m) chenier (relict beaches) along with adjacent marsh and transitional soils associated with spatial distribution of L. bulimoides habitat. The proportion of farmland comprised of soils of the GIS model coincided with actual habitat from a previous survey with a sensitivity of 91.3% and a specificity of 80.1%, and regressed significantly against the proportion of farmland comprised of L. bulimoides habitat (n = 12, P = 0.01, r2 = 0.50, slope = 0.015). A soil model index was calculated to incorporate (1) the proportion of farmland comprised of soils of the GIS model and (2) stocking rate. Fluke egg shedding indices (mean egg count multiplied by prevalence) were calculated for each fluke species on nine farms at four sampling times over a 2-year period. The maximum egg shedding indices for each farm, taken to indicate potential fluke transmission intensity, were correlated for the two fluke species on herds not recently treated for fasciolosis (n = 9, P = 0.004, r2 = 0.72, slope = 0.2), although at no one sampling period were shedding indices of the two fluke species significantly correlated. Egg shedding of C. microbothrioides by cattle correlated with the proportion of farmland comprised of soils included in the GIS model (n = 9, Spearman's rank coefficient was 0.7, P = 0.05). We conclude that (1) the maximum of several observations of the C. microbothrioides egg shedding index may be useful as a surrogate for F. hepatica in estimating risk from snail habitat on a farm when regular flukicide treatment interferes with F. hepatica egg shedding, and (2) the GIS model may estimate site-specific differences in fasciolosis risk to cattle operations in the Chenier Plain based on the association of certain soils with snail intermediate-host habitat.