Every year the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust awards fellowship grants to enable Churchill fellows to carry out projects overseas. For each and every fellow this is very much their "chance of a lifetime". Fortunately in 2006 I was one of 100 successful fellows to have been selected from 755 applicants.

The main purpose of the project was to investigate the intestinal bacterial gut flora of wild Toco toucans however so little is known about toucans in the wild that all information gained will be of much interest. There are currently no in situ projects working with Toucans. 

The bacterial flora is at least partially determined by the type of diet consumed and the prevelance on non invasive bacterial species. It is very likely that the intestinal flora of wild toucans is dominated by gram-postive organisms,but we would like to establish this beyond doubt. When birds are taking meat protein (for rearing young) the ratio may change as meat based diets lead to a gram-negative dominated intestinal flora ( like in raptors). 

Captive toucans frequently suffer from acute negative bacterial infections arising in the intestinal tract and such episodes prove to be fatal often within 24hours. In orderr to manage these species in captivity more effectively this problem must be overcome. An understanding of the types of bacteria normally resident in the intestines of wild toucans may allow selection of a more appropiate captive diet and perhaps preperation of suitable probiotics designed to deter the overwhelming growth of gram-negative bacteria in the gut of captive birds.

Ramphastidae,Bucerotidae and Mushagidae made up 78% (229/295) of the total deaths in a survey. Within these taxa bacterial disease was the predominant cause of death. The single most commonly indentified pathogen was Yersinia ( mainly Y.psedotuberculosis) Yersinia was identified in 36% (5/14) of Toucans dying from bacterial disease.

(Extracts taken from Dr J Lewis and M Vincent's project proposal).