Evolution of Campylobacter Species in New Zealand
Nigel French, Shoukai Yu, Patrick Biggs, Barbara Holland, Paul Fearnhead, Barbara Binney, Andrew Fox, Dai Grove-White, Jessica W. Leigh, William Miller, Petra Muellner and Philip Carter
from: Campylobacter Ecology and Evolution (Edited by: Samuel K. Sheppard). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2014)
Abstract
New Zealand is an isolated archipelago in the South-West Pacific with a unique fauna and flora, a feature partly attributable to it being the last sizable land mass to be colonised by man. In this chapter we test the hypothesis that different periods in the history of New Zealand, from pre-history to post-Polynesian/pre-European arrival and post-European, have left a signature on the evolution of Campylobacter spp. that is detectable in the extant population today. In order to explore and test this hypothesis we describe a brief, relevant history of New Zealand, followed by three studies: 1) an examination of recently discovered populations of new Campylobacter spp. in endemic wild birds and environmental water; 2) a comparison of isolates from humans, ruminants and poultry in the United Kingdom and New Zealand and; 3) an examination of the phylogeny of samples of multilocus sequence typing (MLST) genotype ST-474, the strain responsible for a multi-year poultry-associated epidemic in New Zealand read more ...
