Metabarcoding of Wildlife Fecal Samples from Air Force Installations to Inform Public Health Risk Assessments

Wildlife feces of unknown host origin were sampled from three Air Force Bases in the U.S. Samples were subsequently processed and sequence analyses were performed in the entomology laboratory. The intent of the study was to determine if the sequencing approaches used might produce actionable Public Health information at installations, to support risk assessments that are often based on presumed living hazard and threat distributions but which are rarely ground-truthed and lack functional granularity for response actions. Findings are presented and discussed.