Understanding leptospirosis eco-epidemiology by environmental DNA metabarcoding of irrigation water from two agro-ecological regions of Sri Lanka.

Leptospirosis has been considered to be endemic in wet regions, consistently, leptospiral sequences were detected strongly in Kandy. The great Leptospira species diversity in Kandy observed in this study shows that the etiological agents of leptospirosis in Sri Lanka might be underestimated. Furthermore, our eDNA metabarcoding can be used to discriminate bacterial and animal species diversity in different regions and to explore environmental microbiomes to identify other associated bacterial pathogens in the environment.