RT Journal Article
T1 Zoonotic potential of urban wildlife faeces, assessed through metabarcoding
A1 Cabodevilla, Xabier
A1 Malo, Juan E.
A1 Aguirre de Cárcer, Daniel
A1 Zurdo, Julia
A1 Chaboy Cansado, Rubén
A1 Rastrojo, Alberto
A1 García, Francisco J.
A1 Traba, Juan
AB Monitoring zoonoses in urban environments is of great relevance, where the incidence of certain pathogens may be higher and where population density makes the spread of any contagious disease more likely. In this study we applied a metabarcoding approach to study potentially zoonotic pathogens in faecal samples of 9 urban vertebrate species. We applied this methodology with two objectives. Firstly, to obtain information on potential pathogens present in the urban fauna of a large European city (Madrid, Spain) and to determine which are their main reservoirs. In addition, we tested for differences in the prevalence of these potential pathogens between urban and rural European rabbits, used as ubiquitous species. Additionally, based on the results obtained, we evaluated the effectiveness of metabarcoding as a tool for monitoring potential pathogen. Our results revealed the presence of potentially zoonotic bacterial genera in all studied host species, 10 of these genera with zoonotic species of mandatory monitoring in the European Union. Based on these results, urban birds (especially house sparrows and pigeons) and bats are the species posing the greatest potential risk, with Campylobacter and Listeria genera in birds and of Chlamydia and Vibrio cholerae in bats as most relevant pathogens. This information highlights the risk associated with fresh faeces from urban wildlife. In addition, we detected Campylobacter in >50 % of the urban rabbit samples, while we only detected it in 11 % of the rural rabbit samples. We found that urban rabbits have a higher prevalence of some pathogens relative to rural rabbits, which could indicate increased risk of pathogen transmission to humans. Finally, our results showed that metabarcoding can be an useful tool to quickly obtain a first screening of potentially zoonotic organisms, necessary information to target the monitoring efforts on the most relevant pathogens and host species.
PB Elsevier
SN 0048-9697
YR 2024
FD 2024
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/117828
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/117828
LA eng
NO Cabodevilla, X., Malo, J. E., Aguirre de Cárcer, D., Zurdo, J., Chaboy-Cansado, R., Rastrojo, A., García, F. J., & Traba, J. (2024). Zoonotic potential of urban wildlife faeces, assessed through metabarcoding. Science of The Total Environment, 952, 175866. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.175866
NO This study was funded by the project COVTRAVI-19-CM funded by the Comunidad de Madrid through FEDER and within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resiliency Plan (European Union). This paper contributes to project REMEDINAL TE-CM (P2018/ EMT4338) from Regional Government of Madrid.
NO Comunidad de Madrid
NO European Commission
DS Docta Complutense
RD 6 abr 2025