Prevalence of avian haemosporidian parasites is positively related to the abundance of host species at multiple sites within a region

Ellis, Vincenzo A.; Medeiros, Matthew C. I.; Collins, Michael D.; Sari, Eloisa H. R.; Coffey, Elyse D.; Dickerson, Rebecca C.; Lugarini, Camile; Stratford, Jeffrey A.; Henry, Donata R.; Merrill, Loren; Matthews, Alix E.; Hanson, Alison A.; Roberts, Jackson R.; Joyce, Michael; Kunkel, Melanie R.; Ricklefs, Robert E.

doi:10.1007/s00436-016-5263-3

Cited by 32 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…; Ellis et al . ) in a way that is conserved across the host phylogeny; however, the lack of a relationship between susceptibility and species diversity of host families in the Peru avifauna suggests this cannot explain our results (Fig. ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Deeply conserved susceptibility in a multi‐host, multi‐parasite system

et al. 2019

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Variation in susceptibility is ubiquitous in multi-host, multi-parasite assemblages, and can have profound implications for ecology and evolution in these systems. The extent to which susceptibility to parasites is phylogenetically conserved among hosts can be revealed by analysing diverse regional communities. We screened for haemosporidian parasites in 3983 birds representing 40 families and 523 species, spanning~4500 m elevation in the tropical Andes. To quantify the influence of host phylogeny on infection status, we applied Bayesian phylogenetic multilevel models that included a suite of environmental, spatial, temporal, life history and ecological predictors. We found evidence of deeply conserved susceptibility across the avian tree; host phylogeny explained substantial variation in infection status, and results were robust to phylogenetic uncertainty. Our study suggests that susceptibility is governed, in part, by conserved, latent aspects of anti-parasite defence. This demonstrates the importance of deep phylogeny for understanding present-day ecological interactions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Deeply conserved susceptibility in a multi‐host, multi‐parasite system

et al. 2019

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“…Abundance of close relatives in a host community may also affect infection rate (Parker et al . 2015; Ellis et al . 2017), and could be conserved across our sample of host species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deeply conserved susceptibility in a multi-host, multi-parasite system

Barrow

McNew

Mitchell

et al. 2018

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Variation in susceptibility is ubiquitous in multi‐host, multi‐parasite assemblages, and can have profound implications for ecology and evolution in these systems. The extent to which susceptibility to parasites is phylogenetically conserved among hosts can be revealed by analysing diverse regional communities. We screened for haemosporidian parasites in 3983 birds representing 40 families and 523 species, spanning ~ 4500 m elevation in the tropical Andes. To quantify the influence of host phylogeny on infection status, we applied Bayesian phylogenetic multilevel models that included a suite of environmental, spatial, temporal, life history and ecological predictors. We found evidence of deeply conserved susceptibility across the avian tree; host phylogeny explained substantial variation in infection status, and results were robust to phylogenetic uncertainty. Our study suggests that susceptibility is governed, in part, by conserved, latent aspects of anti‐parasite defence. This demonstrates the importance of deep phylogeny for understanding present‐day ecological interactions.

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“…nucleophilum (DENPET03) in Pinheiro et al [63]) and were more often infected than forest-specialists. This increased abundance of infected resilient hosts and the low host specificity of the parasites they harbor may increase local transmission [64,65], explaining the overall higher prevalence of haemosporidians in pasture areas. Increased host density is associated to higher prevalence of vector-borne diseases [66], what may explain the overall higher prevalence in pasture areas regardless the influence exerted by the presence of pasture-specialists birds.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat modification and seasonality influence avian haemosporidian parasite distributions in southeastern Brazil

et al. 2017

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Habitat modification may change vertebrate and vector-borne disease distributions. However, natural forest regeneration through secondary succession may mitigate these effects. Here we tested the hypothesis that secondary succession influences the distribution of birds and their haemosporidian parasites (genera Plasmodium and Haemoproteus) in a seasonally dry tropical forest, a globally threatened ecosystem, in Brazil. Moreover, we assessed seasonal fluctuations in parasite prevalence and distribution. We sampled birds in four different successional stages at the peak and end of the rainy season, as well as in the middle and at the end of the dry season. A non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis revealed that bird communities in the pasture (i.e., highly modified) areas were different from those in the early, intermediate, and late successional areas (secondary forests). Among 461 individual birds, haemosporidian prevalence was higher in pasture areas than in the more advanced successional stages, but parasite communities were homogeneous across these areas. Parasite prevalence was higher in pasture-specialists birds (resilient species) than in forest-specialists species, suggesting that pasture-specialists may increase infection risk for co-occurring hosts. We found an increase in prevalence between the middle and end of the dry season, a period associated with the beginning of the breeding season (early spring) in southeastern Brazil. We also found effects of seasonality in the relative prevalence of specific parasite lineages. Our results show that natural forest recovery through secondary succession in SDTFs is associated with compositional differences in avian communities, and that advanced successional stages are associated with lower prevalence of avian haemosporidian parasites.

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Prevalence of avian haemosporidian parasites is positively related to the abundance of host species at multiple sites within a region

Cited by 32 publications

References 51 publications

Deeply conserved susceptibility in a multi‐host, multi‐parasite system

Deeply conserved susceptibility in a multi‐host, multi‐parasite system

Deeply conserved susceptibility in a multi-host, multi-parasite system

Habitat modification and seasonality influence avian haemosporidian parasite distributions in southeastern Brazil

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