3.2 Most cited papers
The top 10 papers per citations related to the role of wildlife in AMR are listed in Table 1. The most cited paper was published in 2005 by Sayah et al. in Applied Environmental Microbiology (n = 207), by researchers from the University of Michigan and University of Maryland, U.S.A. The paper compares antimicrobial agent resistance profiles of normal gut microbiota from samples of domestic livestock, poultry, pets, wildlife, and humans in the same geographic region, suggesting that the rate of E. coli recovery may be different for different species. The second most cited paper (n = 179), was also published in Applied Environmental Microbiology in 1999 by Hagedorn et al., by researchers from Department of Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences (Virginia Polytechnic Institute) and State University (Virginia), U.S.A. The paper identifies sources of fecal pollution of a watershed in rural Virginia, from a variety of sources including humans, livestock (cattle, chickens) and wildlife (deer, geese and ducks). The third most cited paper (n=162) was published in Nature, by Gilliver et al., where authors showed that antimicrobial resistance was prevalent (90%) in wildlife species (e.g. , wild rodents) even in the absence of direct exposure to antibiotics, highlighting that the origin of AMR persistence and dissemination is not always known.