Tracking the parasites: Inferring the transmission areas of haemosporidians by tracking their hosts

0454994 - ÚBO 2016 ES eng A - Abstract
Ilieva, M. - Bankov, N. - Požgayová, Milica - Koleček, Jaroslav - Dimitrov, D. - Sjöholm, C. - Peev, S. - Bobeva, A. - Zehtindjiev, P. - Honza, Marcel - Bensch, S. - Procházka, Petr
Tracking the parasites: Inferring the transmission areas of haemosporidians by tracking their hosts.
10th conference of the European Ornithologist's Union, 24-28 August 2015, Badajoz: programme and abstracts. Badajoz: European Ornithologist's Union, 2015 - (Martin, G.; Marzal, A.). s. 203
[Conference of the European Ornithologist's Union /10./. 24.08.2015-28.08.2015, Badajoz]
Institutional support: RVO:68081766
Keywords : bird migration * parasites
Subject RIV: EG - Zoology

The advance in tracking technologies gives us much more opportunities than revealing the migration routes and wintering regions of various bird species. Migratory birds often travel thousands of kilometres to distant areas on the globe where they encounter a great variety of parasites absent in their breeding grounds. Often the parasites are poorly studied in these areas and the tracking of birds’ movements can give us hints where parasite transmission takes place. In this study we investigated the patterns of haemosporidian infections (Plasmodium and Haemoproteus) in two Great Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) populations, from the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, wintering in two different parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. We obtained tracks of 12 birds using geolocators and checked them for presence of haemosporidian parasites, thus estimating the population-specific transmission areas. In addition, we analysed >100 individuals from each population and the available information for haemosporidian parasites in this host from the MalAvi database. A total of four cytochrome b lineages of Haemoproteus and nine lineages of Plasmodium were recorded, with the majority of the lineages transmitted in Sub-Saharan Africa. Several of these lineages can potentially serve as geographical markers when migrating birds with unknown breeding and wintering areas are sampled.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0255657