Journal Article

Impact of host age on viral and bacterial communities in a waterbird population

Royal Veterinary College (RVC) ; University of London [London], Unité Mixte de Recherche d'Épidémiologie des maladies Animales et zoonotiques (UMR EPIA) ; VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement (VAS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), Universiteit van Amsterdam = University of Amsterdam (UvA), van der Hoek, Lia, Smith, Adrian, L, Simmonds, Peter, François, Sarah, Thézé, Julien, Perrins, Christopher, M, Pybus, Oliver, G, University of Oxford, Hill, Sarah, C, Department of Zoology [Oxford] ; University of Oxford

2023

Overview

Abstract Wildlife harbour pathogens that can harm human or livestock health and are the source of most emerging infectious diseases. It is rarely considered how changes in wildlife population age-structures or how age-stratified behaviours might alter the level of pathogen detection within a species, or risk of spillover to other species. Micro-organisms that occur in healthy animals can be an important model for understanding and predicting the dynamics of pathogens of greater health concern, which are hard to study in wild populations due to their relative rarity. We therefore used a metagenomic approach to jointly characterise viral and prokaryotic carriage in faeces collected from a healthy wild bird population ( Cygnus olor ; mute swan) that has been subject to long-term study. Using 223 samples from known individuals allowed us to compare differences in prokaryotic and eukaryotic viral carriage between adults and juveniles at an unprecedented level of detail. We discovered and characterised 77 novel virus species, of which 21% belong putatively to bird-infecting families, and described the core prokaryotic microbiome of C. olor . Whilst no difference in microbiota diversity was observed between juveniles and adult individuals, 50% (4/8) of bird-infecting virus families (picornaviruses, astroviruses, adenoviruses and bornaviruses) and 3.4% (9/267) of prokaryotic families (including Helicobacteraceae , Spirochaetaceae and Flavobacteriaceae families) were differentially abundant and/or prevalent between juveniles and adults. This indicates that perturbations that affect population age-structures of wildlife could alter circulation dynamics and spillover risk of microbes, potentially including pathogens.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group,CCSD,Nature Publishing Group UK,Oxford University Press
• Subject: 631/158/855 / 631/208/514/2254 / 631/326/596/2142 / 631/337 / 692/699/255 / Adenoviruses / Adults / Age / Animals / Animals, Wild / Anseriformes / Aquatic birds / Biodiversity and Ecology / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Bird populations / Birds / Cygnus olor / Ecology / Environmental Sciences / Evolutionary Biology / Harbors / Humans / Infectious diseases / Juveniles / Life Sciences / Livestock / Metagenome / Metagenomics / Microbial Ecology / Microbial Genetics and Genomics / Microbiology / Microbiology and Parasitology / Microbiomes / Pathogens / Perturbation / Population studies / Waterfowl / Wildlife
• ISBN: 0008777519, 9780008777517