Kathryn Huyvaert
Tara E. Chestnut
Jacob L. Kerby
Joseph D. Madison
Larissa L. Bailey
Brittany A. Mosher
2017
<div class="abstract-group "><div class="article-section__content en main"><p>Accurate pathogen detection is essential for developing management strategies to address emerging infectious diseases, an increasingly prominent threat to wildlife. Sampling for free-living pathogens outside of their hosts has benefits for inference and study efficiency, but is still uncommon. We used a laboratory experiment to evaluate the influences of pathogen concentration, water type, and qPCR inhibitors on the detection and quantification of<span> </span><i>Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis</i><span> </span>(<i>Bd</i>) using water filtration. We compared results pre- and post-inhibitor removal, and assessed inferential differences when single versus multiple samples were collected across space or time. We found that qPCR inhibition influenced both<span> </span><i>Bd</i><span> </span>detection and quantification in natural water samples, resulting in biased inferences about<span> </span><i>Bd</i><span> </span>occurrence and abundance. Biases in occurrence could be mitigated by collecting multiple samples in space or time, but biases in<span> </span><i>Bd</i><span> </span>quantification were persistent. Differences in<span> </span><i>Bd</i><span> </span>concentration resulted in variation in detection probability, indicating that occupancy modeling could be used to explore factors influencing heterogeneity in<span> </span><i>Bd</i><span> </span>abundance among samples, sites, or over time. Our work will influence the design of studies involving amphibian disease dynamics and studies utilizing environmental DNA (eDNA) to understand species distributions.</p></div></div>
application/pdf
10.1002/ece3.3616
en
Wiley
Design- and model-based recommendations for detecting and quantifying an amphibian pathogen in environmental samples
article