Medeiros Matthew C I, Ricklefs Robert E, Brawn Jeffrey D, Hamer Gabriel L
Department of Biology,University of Missouri-St. Louis, One University Boulevard,St. Louis,Missouri 63121-4499,USA.
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences,University of Illinois,1102 South Goodwin Ave.,Urbana,Illinois 61801,USA.
Parasitology. 2015 Nov;142(13):1612-20. doi: 10.1017/S0031182015001183. Epub 2015 Sep 23.
The prevalence of vector-borne parasites varies greatly across host species, and this heterogeneity has been used to relate infectious disease susceptibility to host species traits. However, a few empirical studies have directly associated vector-borne parasite prevalence with exposure to vectors across hosts. Here, we use DNA sequencing of blood meals to estimate utilization of different avian host species by Culex mosquitoes, and relate utilization by these malaria vectors to avian Plasmodium prevalence. We found that avian host species that are highly utilized as hosts by avian malaria vectors are significantly more likely to have Plasmodium infections. However, the effect was not consistent among individual Plasmodium taxa. Exposure to vector bites may therefore influence the relative number of all avian Plasmodium infections among host species, while other processes, such as parasite competition and host-parasite coevolution, delimit the host distributions of individual Plasmodium species. We demonstrate that links between avian malaria susceptibility and host traits can be conditioned by patterns of exposure to vectors. Linking vector utilization rates to host traits may be a key area of future research to understand mechanisms that produce variation in the prevalence of vector-borne pathogens among host species.
媒介传播寄生虫的流行率在不同宿主物种间差异很大，这种异质性已被用于将传染病易感性与宿主物种特征联系起来。然而，一些实证研究直接将媒介传播寄生虫的流行率与宿主接触媒介的情况关联起来。在这里，我们利用血餐的DNA测序来估计库蚊对不同鸟类宿主物种的利用情况，并将这些疟蚊的利用情况与鸟类疟原虫的流行率联系起来。我们发现，被鸟类疟蚊高度用作宿主的鸟类宿主物种感染疟原虫的可能性显著更高。然而，这种影响在各个疟原虫分类群中并不一致。因此，接触媒介叮咬可能会影响宿主物种中所有鸟类疟原虫感染的相对数量，而其他过程，如寄生虫竞争和宿主 - 寄生虫共同进化，则限制了各个疟原虫物种的宿主分布。我们证明，鸟类疟疾易感性与宿主特征之间的联系可能受到接触媒介模式的制约。将媒介利用率与宿主特征联系起来可能是未来研究的一个关键领域，以了解导致宿主物种间媒介传播病原体流行率产生差异的机制。
