Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

USDA Logo U.S. Department of Agriculture

Publication Details

Title:
Biodetection of low pathogenic avian influenza virus (LPAIV) infected mallards data set
Author(s):
Golden, Glen J.; Grady, Meredith J.; McLean, Hailey E.; Shriner, Susan A.; Hartwig, Airn; Bowen, Richard A.; Kimball, Bruce A.
Publication Year:
2021
How to Cite:
These data were collected using funding from the U.S. Government and can be used without additional permissions or fees. If you use these data in a publication, presentation, or other research product please use the following citation:
Golden, Glen J.; Grady, Meredith J.; McLean, Hailey E.; Shriner, Susan A.; Hartwig, Airn; Bowen, Richard A.; Kimball, Bruce A. 2021. Biodetection of low pathogenic avian influenza virus (LPAIV) infected mallards data set. Research Dataset Series. USDA, APHIS, WS National Wildlife Research Center. Ft. Collins, Colorado. https://doi.org/10.2737/NWRC-RDS-2021-001
Abstract:
Outbreaks of avian influenza virus (AIV) infection included the spread of highly pathogenic AIV in commercial poultry and backyard flocks in the spring of 2015. This resulted in estimated losses of more than $8.5 million from federal government expenditures, $1.6 billion from direct losses to produces arising from destroyed turkey and chicken egg production, and economy-wide indirect costs of $3.3 billion from impacts on retailers and the food service industries. Additionally, these outbreaks resulted in the death or depopulation of nearly 50 million domestic birds. Domesticated male ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) were trained to display a specific conditioned behavior (i.e. active scratch alert) in response to feces from AIV-infected mallards in comparison to feces from healthy ducks. In order to establish that ferrets were identifying samples based on odors associated with infection, additional experiments controlled for potentially confounding effects, such as: individual duck identity, housing and feed, inoculation concentration, and day of sample collection (post-infection). A final experiment revealed that trained ferrets could detect AIV infection status even in the presence of samples from mallards inoculated with Newcastle disease virus or infectious laryngotracheitis virus. The data included covers the training with live AIV fecal samples, testing with alternate but similar pathogens, and generalization testing with fecal samples from ducks pre and post infection.

Keywords:
health; Wildlife (or Fauna); Mammals; associative learning; olfaction; odor discrimination; operant behavior; Pennsylvania; Philadelphia
Related publications:
  • Golden, Glen J.; Grady, Meredith J.; McLean, Hailey E.; Shriner, Susan A.; Hartwig, Airn; Bowen, Richard A.; Kimball, Bruce A. 2021. Biodetection of a specific odor signature in mallard feces associated with infection by low pathogenic avian influenza A virus. PLOS One. 16(5): e0251841. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251841
Metrics:
Visit count : 201
Download count: 8
More details
Data Access:
  • View metadata (HTML)
  • View file index (HTML), which lists all files in this data publication and short description of their contents
  • Download all files below for the complete publication:

Need information about Using our Formats?