ECOLOGY OF AVIAN E. COLI IN RELATION TO VACCINATION PRESSURE

While a substantial amount of work has focused on defining avian E. coli isolated from clinical disease, there are major gaps inour understanding of how these clinical isolates relate to the overall ecology of E. coli in poultry production systems. We contendthat baseline understanding of the dynamics of the total E. coli population within poultry production systems, and the overallresponse of this community to mitigation strategies, is necessary to better predict the best approaches for E. coli control. Thegoal of this work is to define the ecological relationships occurring between clinical E. coli causing disease in commercial poultryproduction and the residential E. coli in the gastrointestinal tract, respiratory tract, and the barn environment.