psittacine beak and feather disease (pbfd)

The beak and feather disease virus (bfdv) is the cause of psittacine beak and feather disease (pbfd), a dermatological ailment that was first identified and documented in sydney, australia. since then, it has been acknowledged that pbfd is the most prevalent illness affecting both old world and new world psittaciformes, both in the wild and in captivity. at first, pbfd was only discovered in wild psittacines in australia؛ but, because of the global commerce in psittacine species, the illness now affects psittacine species on all continents. five endangered species have identified pbfd as a major mechanism that threatens their existence. about 180 breeding orange-bellied parrots (neophema chrysogaster) survive, making them one of these highly endangered species. one of the psittacine birds on australia s red list of threatened species is the orange-bellied parrot. the illness poses a threat to the survival of the black-cheeked lovebird (agapornis nigrigenis) and the native, endangered cape parrot (poicephalus robustus) in africa. african pittacines that are in risk of extinction include the black-cheeked lovebird (b) and the cape parrot (a). the circovirus that causes pbfd is a member of a broad class of viruses that affect plants and animals. these pathogens are not clearly related to each other, but they do share three non-enveloped capsids that contain single-stranded, circular genomes. in domestic pigeons (pigeon circovirus, picv), common canaries (canary circovirus, cacv), domestic geese (goose circovirus, gocv), ducks (duck circovirus, ducv), and pigs (porcine circovirus, pcv), related viruses have been found and described. only psittacine species are affected by bfdv, which affects more than 40 distinct species. regarding bfdv isolates discovered outside of australia, very little is known. with the disease claiming between 10% and 20% of south african psittacine breeding stocks annually, this illness poses a serious threat to bird producers in that country.