Abstract
In the last decade, house sparrow populations have shown a general decline, especially in cities. Avian malaria has been recently suggested as one of the potential causes of this decline, and its detrimental effects could be exacerbated in urban habitats. It was initially thought that avian malaria parasites would not have large negative effects on wild birds because of their long co-evolution with their hosts. However, it is now well-documented that they can have detrimental effects at both the primo- and chronical infection stages. In this study, we examined avian malaria infection and its physiological and morphological consequences in four populations of wild house sparrows (2 urban and 2 rural). We did not find any relationship between the proportions of infected individuals and the urbanisation score calculated for our populations. However, we observed that the proportion of infected individuals increased during the course of the season, and that juveniles were less infected than adults. We did not detect a strong effect of malaria infection on physiological, morphological and condition indexes. Complex parasite dynamics and the presence of confounding factors could have masked the potential effects of infection. Thus, longitudinal and experimental studies are needed to understand the evolutionary ecology of this very common, but still poorly understood, wild bird parasite.
Highlights
Avian haemosporidian parasites consist of three genera (Plasmodium, Haemoproteus, Leucocytozoon) transmitted by different insect vectors to birds [1], and have been extensively studied in the last few decades as a model in evolutionary ecology [2]
In a previous paper using the same data set [44], we reported that urban house sparrows were in poorer body condition than rural sparrows, Physiological and morphological correlates of blood parasite infection and a previous study suggested that malaria infection can reduce survival in adult and juvenile house sparrows [34]
We examined avian malaria infection status and we aimed to test its impact on physiology in house sparrows living in urban and rural places
Summary
Avian haemosporidian parasites consist of three genera (Plasmodium, Haemoproteus, Leucocytozoon) transmitted by different insect vectors to birds [1], and have been extensively studied in the last few decades as a model in evolutionary ecology [2]. Avian haemosporidian parasites can be found in numerous species worldwide and their prevalence can reach very high percentages in some wild bird populations [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Due to a long co-evolution with their hosts, it was initially suggested that these parasites would not have large negative effects on wild birds [10]. These parasites had a huge detrimental effect on naive bird. Physiological and morphological correlates of blood parasite infection correlates_of_blood_parasite_prevalence_in_ differentially-urbanized_house_sparrow_ populations
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