Isolation of Enteric Pathogens From Bats in Trinidad

Abstract

Bats are one of the most widely distributed mammals in the world, and they are reservoirs or carriers of several zoonoses. Bats were trapped in 27 geographic locations across Trinidad and Tobago, and following euthanasia, gastrointestinal tracts were aseptically removed. Contents were subjected to bacteriologic analysis to detect Salmonella spp., Escherichia coli, and Campylobacter spp. Isolates of Salmonella were serotyped, and E. coli isolates were screened for O157 strains and antimicrobial sensitivity to eight antimicrobial agents; phenotypic characteristics also were determined. Of 377 tested bats, representing 12 species, four bats (1.1%) were positive for Samonella spp, 49 (13.0%) were positive for E. coli, and no bats were positive for E. coli O157 strain or Campylobacter spp. Isolated serotypes of Salmonella included Rubislaw and Molade, both from Noctilio leporinus, a fish-eating bat, Caracas recovered from Molossus major, and Salmonella Group I from Molossus ater, both insect-eating bats. Of the 49 isolates of E. coli tested, 40 (82%) exhibited resistance to one or more antimicrobial agents, and the prevalence of resistant strains was comparatively high to erythromycin (61%) and streptomycin (27%) but lower to gentamycin (0%) and sulphamethozaxole/trimethoprim (2%).

Highly diverse and antimicrobial susceptible Escherichia coli display a naïve bacterial population in fruit bats from the Republic of Congo

“…coli prevalence in fruit bats is difficult since most studies were performed on captive animals, which does not reflect the situation in the wild [16,36,62]. Other studies conducted on free-living fruit bats only include low sample sizes and are thus not representative for generalization [17,23,63,64]. …”

“…coli prevalence of up to 28.5%, however differences in prevalence compared to fruit bats might be due to diet and environmental factors [12,13,17,18,65]. …”

“…Most investigations were restricted to classical microbiological methods [11,12,15,16], whereas further determination of the pathogenic potential of isolated strains has only rarely been performed and was mainly restricted to phylogenetic assignment or detection of intestinal pathogenic E . coli [13,17–19]. …”

“…Indeed, bats have been shown to harbour AMR E . coli , demonstrating that they can be considered an important pool for genetic material of bacteria [17,23,36,37]. …”

Aerosolized Microbes from Organic Rich Materials: Case Study of Bat Guano from Caves in Romania

“…ozaenae, Salmonella arizonae, and Salmonella spp. The source of these microbes is very likely bats' intestines (e.g., Adesiyun et al, 2009;Di Bella et al, 2003). These microbes are also present in human intestines (Guentzel, 1996).…”