Mass mortality of Saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan, results of NGS investigation

In 2015 a mass mortality of over 200,000 of saiga antelopes in centralKazakhstan was caused by haemorrhagic septicaemia due to a commensalbacterium, Pasteurella multocida. Previous analyses have providedevidence that environmental triggers, associated with weather conditionsand specifically air moisture and temperature in the region of the saigacalving over a ten-day period running up to the event, were critical to theproliferation of latent bacteria and historically similar die-offs in the sameareas. This study investigated whether other viral or bacterial agents couldbe detected in samples collected from affected animals using nextgeneration sequencing (NGS) approaches. Viral agents often associatedwith commensal bacterial opportunism were excluded and Pasteurellamultocida serotype B was confirmed as the main cause of the disease bythree independent working groups.