Meeting Abstract
An upper respiratory tract disease has been implicated in population declines in North American Gopherus tortoise species, and after decades of research, little is known about how the multiple microbes associated with disease interact within the host. We collected upper respiratory samples from populations of four tortoise species and used qPCR to assay for two congeneric Mycoplasma pathogens (M. agassizii and M. testudineum) to detect their relationships with each other and with clinical signs of disease. From our data, no infection status—detectable infection with one or both mycoplasmas, or no infection detected—correlated with clinical signs of disease. However, we detected differences in how these microbes interact with each other in different host species, with some indication of context-dependent facilitation. Prevalence of M. agassizii significantly differed among host species, while prevalence of M. testudineum did not. Using these samples, we sequenced three genetic markers of M. agassizii, but did not find any meaningful differentiation of haplotypes among host species. This research addresses two of five known microbes associated of disease in tortoises; additional presence/absence and infection-load data of other pathogens, as well as data on other members of the upper respiratory microbial community, would allow us to more comprehensively understand the drivers of this disease.
