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Avian haemosporidian parasites in an urban forest and their relationship to bird size and abundance

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Abstract

Urbanization has been identified as a threat to biodiversity due to landscape modifications. Studies of parasite ecology in urbanized areas lagged behind those made on macro organisms. Here we studied infection prevalence of haemosporidian parasites in an avian community of an urban forest from Germany, and its relationship with bird abundance and body mass. We used PCR to amplify a fragment of the mtDNA cyt b gene to determine the infection status of birds, and bird point counts to determine bird relative abundances. The avifauna was dominated by two small sized insectivore passerines (Parus major, Cyanistes caeruleus), representing ~40 % of the total bird records. The highest haemosporidian prevalence was recorded for Turdus philomelos (100 %) and for Fringilla coelebs (75 %). Bird abundance and body mass were positively associated with infection status for two haemosporidian genera: Plasmodium and Leucocytozoon. Infection rate was lower in juveniles compared to adult birds. We recorded a total of 7 Plasmodium, 26 Haemoproteus, and 10 Leucocytozoon lineages. Avian malaria (P. relictum) was detected infecting 5 individuals of P. major, the most abundant species in the community. These results, together with those of previous studies at the same site, suggest that potentially any of the genetic haemosporidian lineages detected in this urban forest can be transmitted across native and pet bird species, and to species of conservation concern housed at aviaries.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Marie Melchior, Rebecca Bloch, Claudia Hermes, and Gregor Rolshausen for assistance during fieldwork. D.S.-A. was funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (post-doctoral grant) and by Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT, project number CB-2011-01-168524). This work was also supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (H.M.S., grant number 1008/6-1) and by the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft Freiburg (H.M.S. and G.S.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Red de Biología y Conservación de Vertebrados, Laboratorio de Ecología de Vertebrados e Interacciones Parasitarias, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, 91070, Veracruz, Mexico

    Diego Santiago-Alarcon

  2. Red de Ambiente y Sustentabilidad, Laboratorio de Ecología en Ambientes Perturbados, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Xalapa, 91070, Veracruz, Mexico

    Ian MacGregor-Fors

  3. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Diego Santiago-Alarcon, Katharina Kühnert & H. Martin Schaefer

  4. Department of Wildlife Ecology and Management, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Gernot Segelbacher

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  1. Diego Santiago-Alarcon
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  2. Ian MacGregor-Fors
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  3. Katharina Kühnert
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  5. H. Martin Schaefer
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Correspondence to Diego Santiago-Alarcon.

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Santiago-Alarcon, D., MacGregor-Fors, I., Kühnert, K. et al. Avian haemosporidian parasites in an urban forest and their relationship to bird size and abundance. Urban Ecosyst 19, 331–346 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-015-0494-0

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