Toxoplasma gondii seropositivity across urban and agricultural landscapes in an Australian owl

ABSTRACT

In Australia, Toxoplasma gondii is an introduced parasite with a wide host range. House cats (Felis catus) are one of its definitive hosts. Little is known about T. gondii infection rates in Australian wildlife. Since cat abundance varies with landscape composition, we hypothesised that T. gondii infection would be more prevalent in urban and agricultural landscapes than intact bushland and sought to use samples from the Southern Boobook (Ninox boobook) as an indicator of ecosystem-wide T. gondii contamination. We used modified agglutination tests to determine T. gondii seropositivity in serum and meat juice samples taken from boobooks. Moderately low levels of seropositivity were detected and non-significant landscape-related patterns of seroprevalence were observed. We also examined correlations and interactions with owl age, season, injury status and exposure to an anticoagulant rodenticide. Only season showed significant correlations with observed seropositivity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first published detection of T. gondii seropositivity in a wild predatory bird in Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• Toxoplasmosis
• disease
• contamination
• predator
• cat
• Australia

Acknowledgements

This project was supported financially by The Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment via The Ecological Society of Australia, the BirdLife Australia Stuart Leslie Bird Research Award, and the Edith Cowan University School of Science Postgraduate Student Support Award. We thank Annette Koenders, Adriana Botero, and Louise Pallant for advice and technical assistance in serology testing. Our research would not have been possible without contributions provided by Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation, Native Animal Rescue, Native ARC, Nature Conservation Margaret River Region, Eagles Heritage Wildlife Centre, and many volunteers especially Simon Cherriman, Angela Febey, Amanda Payne, Stuart Payne, and Warren Goodwin.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.