Dirty Birds: Drug Resistant E. coli in Migratory and Non-migratory Birds

Overview

Currently in the scientific world, there is growing awareness of the concept called One Health. One Health states that the environment, humans, and animals are all connected. Furthermore, the One Health concept has provided better understanding of the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistant strains of Escherichia coli (E. coli). These strains come from areas like farms, or any place where there are a plethora of antibiotics. They can be spread through water, soil, plants, and then throughout the food chain. Birds can give their resistant bacteria to humans, causing many health problems, like not having antibiotics work for common infections. As an example, in Qinghai Lake, China, migratory birds are known to be the biggest transmitter of antibiotic resistance E.coli. I wondered if this was also true of the birds in my area. I predicted that migratory birds such as geese will have a higher percentage of antibiotic resistance than local turkeys. To investigate this I collected stool samples from 20 Canada geese and 20 turkeys. I cultured the samples on MacConkey agar. A pink colony was selected from each sample. I identified the type of bacteria using a mass spectrometer at the local hospital laboratory. After that I used another machine to analyze suspectibility to a panel of 27 anitbiotics. The E. coli from geese had more antibiotic resistance compared to the turkeys. Overall 45.5% of E. coli from geese was resistant to any of the antibiotics tested but only 22.2% from turkeys was resistant. Geese had a much higher percentage of multiply resistant E coli, 27.3% compared to only 5.6% from turkeys. There was one goose E. coli sample that was resistant to nine out of the twenty seven antibiotics that I tested. This result confirmed my hypothesis that the migratory geese were expected to have more resistant E. coli. This is something to think about especially with the presence of geese at Carmel Middle School and other areas with many children, like the park where I collected my samples.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Microbiology (Junior Division) · Entry J-16-03

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