Longitudinal prevalence, oocyst shedding and molecular characterisation of Eimeria species in sheep across four states in Australia

Abstract

The prevalence of Eimeria in sheep in Australia has not been well described, therefore a quantitative PCR (qPCR) was developed, validated and used to study the prevalence and oocyst concentration in lamb faecal samples at three sampling periods (weaning, post-weaning and pre-slaughter) from eight farms across South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. A total of 3412 faecal samples were collected from approximately 1182 lambs across the 4 states and screened for the presence of Eimeria using this qPCR at the 18S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) locus. A subset of positives was typed by sequence analysis at the 18S locus. The overall prevalence was 18.1% (95% CI 16.8-19.3%) and of ..