PII: S0169-4758(99)01426-X

Abstract

Institute of Ecology, Vilnius, Lithuania, 1997. $25.00 (607 pages)ISBN 9986 443 08 3 (in Russian)Bird parasites, especially Haemosporida, attract not only parasitologists, but also ecologists, ethologists, wildlife disease workers and evolutionary biologists.Because they are easy to find, and do little harm to the bird, the avian Haemosporida have been studied intensively. Many books have contained chapters summarizing the work on avian parasites, but this book is the first devoted solely to bird Haemosporida, and to encompass both a single author’s extensive research and a general review.The book has an English summary, and figures and tables have brief English captions. It comprises two sections. The first, ‘General section’, gives a brief historical review, describes the life cycles of different families of Haemosporida, and provides a general description of the genera, their pathogenicity, their ultrastructure and geographical distribution. The effect of seasonal migration on the distribution of Haemosporida is also discussed, along with the effect of parasites on hosts, other ecological aspects of parasites, immunity to infection, phylogeny and classification, and methods for sampling and identification of parasites.The second, ‘Systematic section’, covers the four families of blood parasites at the species level. A list of parasites belonging to four genera is given, and this should greatly facilitate future investigations. Taxonomic problems have plagued those working with avian blood parasites and describing new species. Difficulties often arise through investigators finding parasites in a new host and giving them new names. Although Haemosporida species in birds have been reviewed by several investigators, there is still some controversy on species:host ranges. A list of the species, which have become nomen nudum, nomen dubium, species inquirenda and incretae sedis (descriptions given in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, 1985), is given. The author re-examines the species and thus reduces the number of Haemoproteus and Leucocytozoon species that were reported previously under synonyms.The vast majority of parasitological and ecological investigations of avian Haemosporida are based on light microscopy studies of peripheral blood. This book illustrates the blood stages of the parasites, and these 288 drawings are complemented by tables giving the parasites’ measurements, and changes in the size of host erythrocytes due to infection. The regional distribution of different genera is given, and the fauna of Haemosporida in different orders of birds is summarized. Lists of vertebrate hosts and the prevalence of parasites are presented in 89 tables. The author gives the optimal timing for investigation of when the parasite appears in the peripheral blood. The species Plasmodiidae and Garniidae, are not host specific, and it has been shown experimentally that they can infect any species of the class Aves. The 38 species belonging to five subgenera, of which one is a new sub-genus ‘Bennettinia’ based on the characteristics of gametes and oocysts, are also given. Haemoproteidae and Leucocytozoidae are host specific to the level of bird orders. From comparisons of the descriptions reported from earlier investigations, the author recognizes 132 species of Haemoproteus spp belonging to two sub-genera and 35 species of Leucocytozoon spp, of which only one belongs to the sub-genus Akiba.Reptiles share the same genera of parasites with birds, and it is interesting to speculate why, if bird Haemosporida originated from reptiles through an evolutionary continuity, primitive orders of birds are rarely infected.This book is useful for its extensive descriptions of parasites and its wealth of source material on the biology and taxonomic distribution of bird blood parasites.