Nematode Infections in Wild and Domestic Ruminants: Investigating their interplay with Network Analysis

The spread of gastrointestinal nematode (GIN) infections is one of the major concerns for the livestock sector because they have a strong effect on animal health and welfare. These parasites have a major impact on production and thus have severe economic consequences for farmers.

Anthelmintics are used as preventive treatment; however, parasitic nematodes carrying gene variants that induces resistance to these drugs have increased in frequency worldwide during the last decades.In the proposed project, we will primarily investigate parasite communities in reindeer and other deer species native to the Swedish fauna, mouflon and domestic sheep, as model organisms to study the nemabiomes (GIN metacommunities) under Swedish conditions.

Next Generation Sequencing will be used to generate metagenomic data on parasites from the wild and domestic herbivores.

This study investigates the host specificity of nematodes at a genetic level to provide new knowledge of the nemabiomes in a range of grazing livestock and wildlife in Sweden.

Network analysis will be used on host ecology and nemabomes to assess opportunities and directions for horizontal transfer between host species, which is still unexplored at the parasite species level.

It will also reveal the risk for spreading anthelmintic resistance to maintain high levels of animal health and welfare and for the farm economy. Furthermore, potential shifts in nematode species composition can affect the ecology and game management.