Acknowledgments
Our study was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG
KN1097/7-1 to SK) and partly the Czech Science Foundation (GC18-23521J
to DŠ). We thank all contributors for their support. This included the
employees of the Chemical and Veterinary Investigation Offices in North
Rhine-Westphalia, namely Maja Eydner, Henning Petersen (CVUA-OWL),
Annette Kuczka (CVUA-RRW), Maren Kummerfeld (CVUA-MEL), Martin Peters
and Sabine Merbach (CVUA-WFL) and the state agencies for health and food
safety in Erlangen, Germany and Oberschleissheim, Germany for the
sampling of lagomorphs during necropsy. Wildlife pathologists at SVA are
thanked for sampling hares in the general wildlife disease surveillance
programme. Moreover, we are grateful that Axel Wehrend (Clinic for
Veterinary Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Andrology, Giessen, Germany) and
Katja Wehrend (Fachtierarztpraxis im Kleebach) contributed an important
swab sample of a domestic rabbit. All hunters are thanked for their
generous help and assistance in the field. They all have contributed to
the success of this study and, therefore, helped to investigate the
health of wild lagomorphs.