Abstract
Pigeon, doves and songbirds are hosts of the parasite Trichomonas gallinae (Rivolta, 1878), which causes avian trichomonosis. Raptors are infected when they digest infected prey. A high percentage of the diet of Eurasian sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus (Linnaeus) is comprised of birds. During the breeding season 2012 and 2013, we clinically tested 298 nestling Eurasian sparrowhawks from urban and rural areas of the Czech Republic for the presence of trichomonads. Sparrowhawk nestlings in the urban area were more infected (32.9%) than in the rural area (12.2%) in 2012 (χ(2) = 6.184, P = 0.045). The number of infected nestlings dropped in the urban area (5.4%) and remained similar in the rural area (16.6%) in 2013. Sequences of ITS region and SSU rDNA confirmed that the isolates from infected sparrowhawk nestlings belonged to Trichomonas gallinae.
Highlights
The Eurasian sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus (Linnaeus) is a common raptor that preferably breeds in woods and forests where it can find an abundance of prey (Newton 1986)
The first was an urban area of Prague, Czech Republic (~240 km2 – a circle in the central Prague with a radius of 8.7 km), where sparrowhawks breed in parks, gardens, cemeteries and urban greenery
Results show a certain similarity in the prevalence of trichomonosis in sparrowhawk chicks from the rural area
Summary
The Eurasian sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus (Linnaeus) is a common raptor that preferably breeds in woods and forests where it can find an abundance of prey (Newton 1986). Since small and medium-sized birds comprise 97% of the sparrowhawk’s diet during the breeding season (Newton 1986), the sparrowhawks have a high probability of encountering the parasite through ingestion of infected prey. Only a few studies characterised T. gallinae from birds of prey using molecular data (Krone et al 2005, Sansano-Maestre et al 2009, Chi et al 2013). The main aim of the present study was to determine the prevalence of trichomonads in Eurasian sparrowhawks in the urban population of Prague and the rural population in northern Bohemia. A higher infection rate in urban sparrowhawks was suggested because of the high concentration of birds, especially pigeons (Fuchs et al 2002).
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