University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Clay content and pH: soil characteristic associations with the persistent presence of chronic wasting disease in northern Illinois

Submitter: Nelda Rivera De Morales

Content Files
Dorak et al 2017_ Clay content and pH in soil and the persistent presence of CWD in northern Illinois.pdf

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/118048

Description

Title
Clay content and pH: soil characteristic associations with the persistent presence of chronic wasting disease in northern Illinois
Contributor(s)
  • Dorak, Sheena J.
  • Green, Michelle L.
  • Wander, Michelle L.
  • Ruiz, Marilyn O.
  • Buhnerkempe, Michael G.
  • Tian, Ting
  • Novakofski, Jan E.
  • Mateus-Pinilla, Nohra E.
Issue Date
2017-12-22
Keyword(s)
  • CWD
  • Environmental reservoirs
Date of Ingest
2023-05-17T18:13:20-05:00
Abstract
Environmental reservoirs are important to infectious disease transmission and persistence, but empirical analyses are relatively few. The natural environment is a reservoir for prions that cause chronic wasting disease (CWD) and influences the risk of transmission to susceptible cervids. Soil is one environmental component demonstrated to affect prion infectivity and persistence. Here we provide the first landscape predictive model for CWD based solely on soil characteristics. We built a boosted regression tree model to predict the probability of the persistent presence of CWD in a region of northern Illinois using CWD surveillance in deer and soils data. We evaluated the outcome for possible pathways by which soil characteristics may increase the probability of CWD transmission via environmental contamination. Soil clay content and pH were the most important predictive soil characteristics of the persistent presence of CWD. The results suggest that exposure to prions in the environment is greater where percent clay is less than 18% and soil pH is greater than 6.6. These characteristics could alter availability of prions immobilized in soil and contribute to the environmental risk factors involved in the epidemiological complexity of CWD infection in natural populations of white- tailed deer.
Type of Resource
text

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Staff Publications, Presentations, Reports, Etc. - Illinois Natural History Survey PRIMARY
Works by INHS staff that were not published by the INHS