Abstract
Snow leopards inhabit the cold, arid environments of the high mountains of South and Central Asia. These living conditions likely affect the abundance and composition of microbes with the capacity to infect these animals. It is important to investigate the microbes that snow leopards are exposed to detect infectious disease threats and define a baseline for future changes that may impact the health of this endangered felid. In this work, next-generation sequencing is used to investigate the fecal (and in a few cases serum) virome of seven snow leopards from the Tost Mountains of Mongolia. The viral species to which the greatest number of sequences reads showed high similarity was rotavirus. Excluding one animal with overall very few sequence reads, four of six animals (67%) displayed evidence of rotavirus infection. A serum sample of a male and a rectal swab of a female snow leopard produced sequence reads identical or closely similar to felid herpesvirus 1, providing the first evidence that this virus infects snow leopards. In addition, the rectal swab from the same female also displayed sequence reads most similar to feline papillomavirus 2, which is the first evidence for this virus infecting snow leopards. The rectal swabs from all animals also showed evidence for the presence of small circular DNA viruses, predominantly Circular Rep-Encoding Single-Stranded (CRESS) DNA viruses and in one case feline anellovirus. Several of the viruses implicated in the present study could affect the health of snow leopards. In animals which are under environmental stress, for example, young dispersing individuals and lactating females, health issues may be exacerbated by latent virus infections.
Highlights
Infectious diseases can affect the abundance and distribution of animals by reducing survival and reproduction [1, 2]
We report viral sequences that were obtained by next-generation sequencing (NGS) of rectal swab samples and, for a few animals, serum samples from snow leopards in the Tost Mountains of Mongolia
Extracted RNA and DNA from eight rectal swabs and three sera were processed for NGS
Summary
Infectious diseases can affect the abundance and distribution of animals by reducing survival and reproduction [1, 2]. Even small changes in these parameters can substantially increase the extinction risk, for example, in species with slow reproduction or where populations are small [3]. This applies to many large carnivore populations as they exhibit a low reproductive output, occur at low densities naturally, and populations are often further reduced and isolated as a consequence. The detrimental effects that a disease outbreak can cause a felid population are well-exemplified by the canine distemper virus outbreak in Serengeti lions (Panthera leo) in 1994. In contrast to the Serengeti lions, which are frequently observed, such an outbreak could occur unnoticed in snow leopards and other less studied felids
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