Bird Feeder Cleaning Experiments on Mycoplasma gallisepticum Transmission in House Finches

Two independent experiments on captive house finches investigate whether cleaning bird feeders with bleach wipes reduces the spread of the bacterial pathogen Mycoplasma gallisepticum. The dataset includes results from an 'Infected cagemate' experiment and a 'Fomite-only' experiment, tracking pathogen loads, disease scores, and antibody changes. Data and code were authored by Dana Hawley and last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling disease transmission dynamics based on pathogen load data from co-housed birds.
• Evaluating the efficacy of surface cleaning as a mitigation strategy based on the experimental design.
• Analyzing antibody response changes in receiver birds based on serological data from the 'Fomite-only' experiment.

Strengths

• Data from two distinct experimental designs ('Infected cagemate' and 'Fomite-only') allows for comparative analysis.
• Includes multiple metrics of transmission: pathogen loads, disease scores, and antibody quantification.
• Published under a CC0 1.0 public domain license, permitting unrestricted reuse.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The 147.1 KB size indicates a limited scope, likely suitable for case study analysis rather than large-scale ML.

Provenance

Source

Dana Hawley via figshare.

Collection Method

Collected over two independent controlled experiments on captive house finches.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-29 17:14:52; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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