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Survey of haemosporidian parasite infections in an endangered high alpine bird

The Brown-capped Rosy-Finch is an endangered high alpine specialist that breeds on cliffs in the Rocky Mountains of North America. We know little about the parasites that infect these birds but filling this knowledge gap is important for understanding their population decline. The aim of this study...

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Autores principales: Theodosopoulos, Angela N., Spellman, Garth M., Taylor, Scott A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9926756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36788554
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-023-05667-7
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author Theodosopoulos, Angela N.
Spellman, Garth M.
Taylor, Scott A.
author_facet Theodosopoulos, Angela N.
Spellman, Garth M.
Taylor, Scott A.
author_sort Theodosopoulos, Angela N.
collection PubMed
description The Brown-capped Rosy-Finch is an endangered high alpine specialist that breeds on cliffs in the Rocky Mountains of North America. We know little about the parasites that infect these birds but filling this knowledge gap is important for understanding their population decline. The aim of this study was to survey haemosporidian parasite infections in Brown-capped Rosy-Finches. We sampled 104 Brown-capped Rosy-Finches during their breeding season at six sampling sites spanning the Colorado Rocky Mountains where they are nearly endemic. We used nested PCR methods to screen birds for parasite infections, and Sanger sequencing data were used to identify parasite lineages. Four of the sampling sites had birds with infections. Females were more often infected than males (prevalence = 15.6% and 9.7%, respectively). We observed twice as many infected birds sampled in July compared to birds sampled in June (prevalence = 12.5% and 6.25%, respectively). The percent of infected birds by sampling site ranged from 0 to over 20%. In total we identified eight different genetic lineages of haemosporidian parasites infecting Brown-capped Rosy-Finches—seven were in the genus Leucocytozoon, and one was in the genus Haemoproteus. Network analysis clearly separates Haemoproteus from Leucocytozoon, with Leucocytozoon lineages comprising two major clusters. Based on reports made to the MalAvi database, all lineages in Cluster 1 have the same reported insect vector, Simulium silvestre. We report that Brown-capped Rosy-Finches experience infections with haemosporidian parasites and that the percentage of infected birds differed markedly between sampling sites. We hypothesize that vector ecology and associated variation in climate at sampling sites explain our observations. [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13071-023-05667-7.
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spelling pubmed-99267562023-02-15 Survey of haemosporidian parasite infections in an endangered high alpine bird Theodosopoulos, Angela N. Spellman, Garth M. Taylor, Scott A. Parasit Vectors Brief Report The Brown-capped Rosy-Finch is an endangered high alpine specialist that breeds on cliffs in the Rocky Mountains of North America. We know little about the parasites that infect these birds but filling this knowledge gap is important for understanding their population decline. The aim of this study was to survey haemosporidian parasite infections in Brown-capped Rosy-Finches. We sampled 104 Brown-capped Rosy-Finches during their breeding season at six sampling sites spanning the Colorado Rocky Mountains where they are nearly endemic. We used nested PCR methods to screen birds for parasite infections, and Sanger sequencing data were used to identify parasite lineages. Four of the sampling sites had birds with infections. Females were more often infected than males (prevalence = 15.6% and 9.7%, respectively). We observed twice as many infected birds sampled in July compared to birds sampled in June (prevalence = 12.5% and 6.25%, respectively). The percent of infected birds by sampling site ranged from 0 to over 20%. In total we identified eight different genetic lineages of haemosporidian parasites infecting Brown-capped Rosy-Finches—seven were in the genus Leucocytozoon, and one was in the genus Haemoproteus. Network analysis clearly separates Haemoproteus from Leucocytozoon, with Leucocytozoon lineages comprising two major clusters. Based on reports made to the MalAvi database, all lineages in Cluster 1 have the same reported insect vector, Simulium silvestre. We report that Brown-capped Rosy-Finches experience infections with haemosporidian parasites and that the percentage of infected birds differed markedly between sampling sites. We hypothesize that vector ecology and associated variation in climate at sampling sites explain our observations. [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13071-023-05667-7. BioMed Central 2023-02-14 /pmc/articles/PMC9926756/ /pubmed/36788554 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-023-05667-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Brief Report
Theodosopoulos, Angela N.
Spellman, Garth M.
Taylor, Scott A.
Survey of haemosporidian parasite infections in an endangered high alpine bird
title Survey of haemosporidian parasite infections in an endangered high alpine bird
title_full Survey of haemosporidian parasite infections in an endangered high alpine bird
title_fullStr Survey of haemosporidian parasite infections in an endangered high alpine bird
title_full_unstemmed Survey of haemosporidian parasite infections in an endangered high alpine bird
title_short Survey of haemosporidian parasite infections in an endangered high alpine bird
title_sort survey of haemosporidian parasite infections in an endangered high alpine bird
topic Brief Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9926756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36788554
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-023-05667-7
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