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Avian haemosporidian detection across source materials: prevalence and genetic diversity

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Abstract

Avian haemosporidians make up one of the most widely distributed and diverse vector borne parasite systems, found nearly worldwide in tropical and temperate areas. Despite the clear relationship between avian host fitness measures and infection, few studies have addressed the importance of source material selection when assessing these relationships. We show that source material, here blood and pectoral muscle, do not yield equivalent results when assessing prevalence and genetic diversity of haemosporidian genera. We find higher prevalence and genetic diversity are recovered from blood versus pectoral muscle for Haemoproteus. Contrastingly, we find that a higher prevalence of Plasmodium is detected from pectoral muscle, while higher genetic diversity is recovered from blood. Our results indicate that source material may bias parasite detection and be an important factor in study design, which is not only related to parasite infection, but by extension to the ecology and fitness of avian hosts.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the country of Benin for the permission to perform this research. We would like to thank Alphonse Adite for the invaluable assistance in obtaining permits and field collecting and Robert Adite for his driving prowess. We thank Dr. Toby J. Hibbitts and Jerry W. Huntley for the field collections of samples. We are grateful to Carter Atkinson for proposing valuable comments and suggestions that improved the manuscript. We would also like to thank Jerry Huntley and Jonathan Puritz for the much need insightful comments on an earlier draft of the paper. We also thank Danielle Walkup for the helpful discussions on the material along the way. This is publication number 1552 of the Biodiversity, Research, and Teaching Collections at Texas A&M University. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Johanna A. Harvey & Gary Voelker

  2. Biodiversity Research Teaching Collection, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Johanna A. Harvey & Gary Voelker

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  1. Johanna A. Harvey
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  2. Gary Voelker
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Correspondence to Johanna A. Harvey.

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Host species taxonomic information including, locality sampled (Chutes de Koudou (C), Point Triplo (P), Dogo Forest (D) Lama Forest (L), Lake Toho (T), Abomey Calavi (A), number of individuals sampled (N), samples greater then 1 per locality listed, and frequency of detection across Haemoproteus (H), Leucocytozoon (L), Plasmodium (P), bioregion sampled in, novel lineages recovered, MalAvi lineages recovered (XLSX 44 kb)

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Harvey, J.A., Voelker, G. Avian haemosporidian detection across source materials: prevalence and genetic diversity. Parasitol Res 116, 3361–3371 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-017-5654-0

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