Skip to main page 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.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Aug 23:6:e5468.
doi: 10.7717/peerj.5468. eCollection 2018.

Investigating diversity of pathogenic microbes in commercial bait trade water

Andrew R Mahon  1 , Dean J Horton  1 , Deric R Learman  1 , Lucas R Nathan  2 , Christopher L Jerde  3
Affiliations

Investigating diversity of pathogenic microbes in commercial bait trade water

Andrew R Mahon et al. PeerJ. .

Abstract

The recreational bait trade is a potential pathway for pathogen introduction and spread when anglers dump bait shop sourced water into aquatic systems. Despite this possibility, and previous recognition of the importance of the bait trade in the spread of aquatic invasive species (AIS), to date there has been no region wide survey documenting pathogens in retail bait shops. In this study, we analyzed 96 environmental DNA samples from retail bait shops around the Great Lakes region to identify pathogens, targeting the V4 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene. Additionally, we used samples from one site in Lake Michigan as a comparison to pathogen diversity and abundance in natural aquatic systems. Our results identified nine different groups of pathogens in the bait shop samples, including those that pose risks to both humans and fish species. Compared to wild sourced samples, the bait shops had higher relative abundance and greater taxonomic diversity. These findings suggest that the bait trade represents a potentially important pathway that could introduce and spread pathogens throughout the Great Lakes region. Improving pathogen screening and angler outreach should be used in combination to aid in preventing the future spread of high risk pathogens.

Keywords: Environmental DNA; Metabarcoding; Microbes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare there are no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Map of collection locations for samples used in this study.
Collection locations of bait water samples collected from commercial vendors utilized in this study. Included are shop locations (black circles) and the sampling location for the Lake Michigan water sample (black star) included in the dataset.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Altschul SF, Gish W, Miller W, Myers EW, Lipman DJ. Basic local alignment search tool. Journal of Molecular Biology. 1990;215:403–410. doi: 10.1016/S0022-2836(05)80360-2. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Claesson MJ, Wang Q, O’Sullivan O, Greene-Diniz R, Cole JR, Ross RP, O’Toole PW. Comparison of two next-generation sequencing technologies for resolving highly complex microbiota composition using tandem variable 16S rRNA gene regions. Nucleic Acids Research. 2010;38(22):e200. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkq873. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Cole JR, Wang Q, Fish JA, Chai B, McGarrell DM, Sun Y, Brown CT, Porras-Alfaro A, Kuske CR, Tiedje JM. Ribosomal database project: data and tools for high throughput rRNA analysis. Nucleic Acids Research. 2014;42:D633–D642. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkt1244. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Connelly NA, Lauber TB, Stedman RC, Knuth BA. Bait dealers’ roles in preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species and fish pathogens in the Great Lakes region. Journal of Great Lakes Research. 2018;44(3):514–520. doi: 10.1016/j.jglr.2018.04.005. - DOI
    1. Daszak P, Cunningham AA, Hyatt AD. Emerging infectious diseases of wildlife—threats to biodiversity and human health. Science. 2000;287:443–449. doi: 10.1126/science.287.5452.443. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources