Beyond the Plate: Spillover of antimicrobial resistance to wild populations

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health challenge that threatens the foundation of modern medicine. Globally, the agricultural sector accounts for over half of administered antibiotics. In aquatic systems, where there is no division between farmed and wild space, the spillover of pollutants from commercial fisheries increasingly challenges ecosystem health, although the consequences of these patterns remain poorly understood. Here, we combine functional genomics and modeling techniques to investigate the impact of AMR on wild fish populations of the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) across Vancouver Island. Home to one of the highest concentrations of salmon farms in Canada, Vancouver Island presents a gradient of lakes varying in connectivity to marine farming sites. This ecology allows us to establish potential links between antibiotic-use in managed areas and AMR accumulation in wild fauna. With multiple ecotypes and flexible habitat use, sticklebacks are an ideal animal model to assess AMR accumulation in diverse scenarios. Using next-generation sequencing we first screened the diversity of AMR genes in microbiomes across populations. Then, we quantified co-occurence of the most abundant mutations using ddPCR. Using structural equation modeling, we examined the relative contributions of connectivity to salmon farms, limnological, and land-use metrics on the abundance and diversity of AMR genes. Together, these data move beyond system-specific case studies and provide generalizable knowledge that can be applied to improve fisheries management.

Primary Presenter: Chloé Fouilloux, University of Wisconsin, Madison (fouilloux@wisc.edu)

Authors:

Eric Neeno-Eckwall, University of Wisconsin, Madison  (ecneenoeckwa@wisc.edu)

John Berini, Carleton College  (jberini@carleton.edu)

Heather Alexander, Carleton College  (hjalexand@gmail.com)

Grace Vaziri, University of Connecticut  (grace.vaziri@uconn.edu)

Emma Choi, University of Connecticut  (emma.choi@uconn.edu)

Daniel Bolnick, University of Connecticut  (daniel.bolnick@uconn.edu)

Amanda Hund, Carleton College  (ahund@carleton.edu)

Jessica Hite, University of Wisconsin, Madison  (jhite2@wisc.edu)