“There is likely extensive back-and-forth movement of the viruses not only between different wild carnivore species, but also between wild and domestic species, so trying to determine the pathways of transmission from an epidemiological standpoint is quite difficult.” Just one mutation “Although these defined groups of related viruses in a single wild carnivore species tell you that the virus is likely being maintained in such wild species, there was also a tremendous amount of mixing between strains from wild and domestic animals,” he says. There were more clues about how the virus moves from animal to animal, Allison says. What’s more, the genetic sequences of the viruses reveal that viruses from one type of host were closely related to one another, a strong indication of sustained ongoing transmission in certain species like coyotes and raccoons, and that they are natural hosts for the viruses. “When I found the virus with the same genetic signatures in raccoons from Maine to Florida, that was the first indication that these weren’t isolated spillover events, and that the virus was widespread in raccoon populations,” Allison says.Īllison, Parrish and their colleagues tested samples from 852 wild carnivores from all over the United States, and they detected genetic sequences of the virus in 24 percent of coyotes, 19 percent of raccoons, and 67 percent of pumas. Until then, it was not known that raccoons could be infected with the virus, but when they and their colleagues began to investigate, they found outbreaks at wildlife rehabilitation shelters all over the country. “Surprisingly, it was everywhere we looked.” Widespread in raccoonsĬolin Parrish’s lab at Cornell has worked on canine parvovirus since it first emerged, and he and Allison became involved in wildlife infections after a 2007 outbreak of canine parvovirus killed several raccoons at a wildlife rehabilitation facility in Fairfax County, Virginia. “This is the first systematic study to investigate which carnivore species in the wild are infected with canine parvovirus and how prevalent it may be,” says Andrew Allison, a postdoctoral associate at the Baker Institute for Animal Health in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University. Since then, the virus has occasionally shown up in wild animals, but these were considered a result of small-scale spillovers from dog populations.Ī new study shows that many wild carnivores actually carry the virus, and that it is relatively easy for a parvovirus from a wild carnivore to adapt to life in a dog and vice versa. When canine parvovirus first emerged in 1978, it started a global pandemic that’s thought to have killed hundreds of thousands of dogs.
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