Journal article
Spatial Analysis of a Cat-Borne Disease Reveals That Soil pH and Clay Content Are Risk Factors for Sarcocystosis in Sheep
Patrick L Taggart, Mark A Stevenson, Simon M Firestone, Milton M McAllister, Charles GB Caraguel
Frontiers in Veterinary Science | Frontiers Media | Published : 2019
Abstract
Cat-borne parasites and their associated diseases have substantial impacts on human, livestock, and wildlife health worldwide. Despite this, large and detailed datasets that allow researchers to study broad-scale trends in the ecology of cat-borne diseases are either difficult to obtain or non-existent. One condition that is easily detected at slaughter is macroscopic sarcocystosis, a cat-borne parasitosis of sheep (Ovis aries). We conducted a cross-sectional study to describe the geographic distribution of sarcocystosis in sheep throughout South Australia and investigate ecosystem characteristics associated with the presence of disease. Data were obtained from two slaughterhouses which proc..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Primary Industries and Regions South Australia Biosecurity, particularly Elise Matthews and Celia Dickason, who manage the slaughterhouse surveillance program and the collection of slaughterhouse data, and who helped source the farm identification code region data used in our study. Thanks also to Natural Resource Management for providing data relating to soils. We extend our thanks to Thomas Foods International for participating in the slaughterhouse surveillance program and the program funders, the South Australian Sheep Industry through the South Australian Sheep Industry Fund and the National Sheep Industry through Animal Health Australia. Thanks to Adrian Baddeley, Tilman Davies, and Rolf Turner for their enthusiastic help with our data analyses. SF is supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE160100477). We additionally thank the Schultz foundation and Australian Wool Innovation for supporting this project through their generous support of PT's Ph.D. studies.