MOE Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, College of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Sep 7;23(18):10277. doi: 10.3390/ijms231810277.
Migratory birds spend several months in their breeding grounds in sympatry with local resident birds and relatively shorter periods of time at stopover sites. During migration, parasites may be transmitted between migratory and resident birds. However, to what extent they share these parasites remains unclear. In this study, we compared the assemblages of haemosporidian parasites in migratory, resident, and passing birds, as well as the correlations between parasite assemblages and host phylogeny. Compared with passing birds, migratory birds were more likely to share parasites with resident birds. Shared lineages showed significantly higher prevalence rates than other lineages, indicating that common parasites are more likely to spill over from the current host to other birds. For shared lineages, the prevalence was significantly higher in resident birds than in migratory birds, suggesting that migratory birds pick up parasites at their breeding ground. Among the shared lineages, almost two-thirds presented no phylogenetic signal in their prevalence, indicating that parasite transmission among host species is weakly or not correlated with host phylogeny. Moreover, similarities between parasite assemblages are not correlated with either migration status or the phylogeny of hosts. Our results show that the prevalence, rather than host phylogeny, plays a central role in parasite transmission between migratory and resident birds in breeding grounds.
候鸟在繁殖地与当地留鸟共存数月，而在中途停留地的时间相对较短。在迁徙过程中，寄生虫可能会在候鸟和留鸟之间传播。然而，它们在多大程度上共享这些寄生虫尚不清楚。在这项研究中，我们比较了迁徙鸟、留鸟和过境鸟中血孢子虫寄生虫的组合，以及寄生虫组合与宿主系统发育之间的相关性。与过境鸟相比，候鸟与留鸟共享寄生虫的可能性更大。共享谱系的流行率明显高于其他谱系，这表明常见寄生虫更有可能从当前宿主溢出到其他鸟类。对于共享谱系，留鸟的流行率明显高于候鸟，这表明候鸟在繁殖地感染了寄生虫。在共享谱系中，近三分之二的谱系在流行率上没有表现出系统发育信号，这表明宿主物种之间的寄生虫传播与宿主系统发育关系较弱或不相关。此外，寄生虫组合之间的相似性与迁徙状态或宿主的系统发育无关。我们的研究结果表明，在繁殖地，寄生虫在候鸟和留鸟之间的传播主要取决于流行率，而不是宿主系统发育。
