Antarctic Penguins as Reservoirs of Diversity for Avian Avulaviruses

Approximately 99% of all viruses are still to be described, and in our changing world, any one of these unknown viruses could potentially expand their host range and cause epidemic disease in wildlife, agricultural animals, or humans. Avian avulavirus 1 causes outbreaks in wild birds and poultry and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Virology
Main Authors: Wille, Michelle, Aban, Malet, Wang, Jing, Moore, Nicole, Shan, Songhua, Marshall, John, González-Acuña, Daniel, Vijaykrishna, Dhanasekaran, Butler, Jeff, Wang, Jianning, Hall, Richard J., Williams, David T., Hurt, Aeron C.
Other Authors: Schultz-Cherry, Stacey, Institutio Antartico Chileno, Department of Health, Australian Government, Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, Australian Government
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: American Society for Microbiology 2019
Subjects:
Antarctic
Antarc*
Antarctica
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/jvi.00271-19
https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/JVI.00271-19
Description
Summary:Approximately 99% of all viruses are still to be described, and in our changing world, any one of these unknown viruses could potentially expand their host range and cause epidemic disease in wildlife, agricultural animals, or humans. Avian avulavirus 1 causes outbreaks in wild birds and poultry and is thus well described. However, for many avulavirus species, only a single specimen has been described, and their viral ecology and epidemiology are unknown. Through the detection of avian avulaviruses in penguins from Antarctica, we have been able to expand upon our understanding of three avian avulavirus species (avian avulaviruses 17 to 19) and report a potentially novel avulavirus species. Importantly, we show that penguins appear to play a key role in the epidemiology of avian avulaviruses, and we encourage additional sampling of this avian group.

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