Viruses of waterfowl

Viral disease can cause substantial mortality in wild populations of ducks as well as domesticated geese and ducks. Migrating and captive waterfowl play a role in the dynamics and epidemiology of some viruses that also infect humans, such as influenza virus and West Nile virus. Crowded farm conditions favor the transmission of infectious disease agents among birds. Disease transmission is further facilitated by the comingling of wild anatids with nonmigratory resident waterfowl flocks in zoological parks or on farms. The following article will emphasize the most important viral diseases of waterfowl and briefly cover the newer diseases of suspected viral etiology in this group of birds. As viral detection and identification techniques become more and more sophisticated, and as the study of wildlife diseases increases, new viruses will be discovered and new diseases will be encountered. More research into the viral diseases of waterfowl is needed; the implementation of the latest techniques in molecular epidemiology in addition to the “gold standard” techniques such as virus isolation and histopathology, will yield insight into how viruses move from species to species and from region to region.