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Haemosporidian prevalence and parasitaemia in the Black-throated sparrow (Amphispiza bilineata) in central-Mexican dryland habitats

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Abstract

To date it is not well-understood how seasonality and human-induced habitat change may affect haemosporidian prevalence and parasitaemia in bird hosts in dryland habitats. We compared haemosporidian prevalence and parasitaemia between habitat types, including Yucca-dominated scrublands (closed habitat) and creosotebush scrublands (open habitat), and between seasons, including non-breeding (dry) and breeding (wet) in the Black-throated sparrow (Amphispiza bilineata) at semi-arid scrublands of Central Mexico. This bird species has different habitat preferences in comparison to other, previously studied species in the region; it shows higher abundances in open than in closed habitats and avoids urban areas. Overall haemosporidian prevalence was 22.1%. Prevalence and parasitaemia were higher for Haemoproteus sp. (Parahaemoproteus sp.) than Plasmodium. Variation in haemoparasitism was not associated with habitat type. This response differs from the previously recorded response in other bird species in the region for which haemoparasitism increases with increasing habitat degradation. Seasonality seems to be the most important driver of parasite infection for this sparrow as prevalence and parasitaemia were higher during the breeding than the non-breeding season. Two new lineages of Haemoproteus sp. that had not been reported before in any avian species were found through molecular diagnosis. A high diversity of haemosporidian lineages is shared among sites. More study is needed to understand the mechanisms that associate parasitaemia, prevalence, and specific environmental factors.

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Acknowledgements

We thank to Dr. Gerardo Argüello-Astorga who provided space and material support for the project’s execution, G. Valkiūnas granted us access to a lab in the Nature Research Center, Vilnius, Lithuania and provided help interpreting parasite images, and Dr. Diego Santiago-Alarcon for the technical advice. We thank Maria T. Reinoso, Julio C. Canales, Cristian A. de la Torre, Karina Monzalvo, Antonio Ortiz, Alicia A. Lugo, and J. Romeo Tinajero who assisted us during fieldwork. We also thank Juan P. Rodas and María Elizabeth Cortés Cedillo for the technical assistance. The National Laboratory on Agricultural, Medical and Environmental Biotechnology (Mexico) and Verónica Zárate Chávez provided help for sequencing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. S.L.P. C.P, Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica A.C, Camino a la Presa San José 2055, Colonia Lomas 4a Sección, 78216, San Luis Potosí, Mexico

    J. G. Ham-Dueñas, L. Chapa-Vargas & E. Huber-Sannwald

  2. Guilford College, 5800 West Friendly Avenue, Greensboro, NC, 27410, USA

    C. M. Stracey

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  1. J. G. Ham-Dueñas
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  2. L. Chapa-Vargas
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Correspondence to L. Chapa-Vargas.

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Research involving animals

All fieldwork was conducted using a bird capture permit issued by SEMARNAT, the Secretary for Environmental Management and Natural Resources of Mexico (permit number FAUT-0157). We complied with all Mexican and international regulations required for conducting wildlife research in the field including those from IUCN and CITES. No individuals were harmed during data collection, and all individuals were released on the capture location after samples and measurements were taken.

Funding

This work is part of a Research Project funded by the Mexican Basic Science CONACYT program (project number CB-2012-1-183377). JGH-D thanks Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) for the scholarship awarded for the completion of this study and financial support (325435).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Availability of data and material

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available at the MalAvi (http://mbio-serv2.mbioekol.lu.se/Malavi/) and GenBank (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/) repositories and/or available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Ham-Dueñas, J.G., Chapa-Vargas, L., Stracey, C.M. et al. Haemosporidian prevalence and parasitaemia in the Black-throated sparrow (Amphispiza bilineata) in central-Mexican dryland habitats. Parasitol Res 116, 2527–2537 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-017-5562-3

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