Savage Jacqueline, Santos Jaclyn, Sweet Paul R, Galen Spencer C
Biology Department, University of Scranton, Loyola Science Center, Scranton, PA, 18510, USA.
Department of Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, 10024, USA.
Parasitol Res. 2025 May 1;124(5):47. doi: 10.1007/s00436-025-08490-4.
Biodiversity surveys remain a critical tool for characterizing the global species richness of parasites. In high-latitude regions of the world, characterizing parasite biodiversity is of particular importance due to the rapid rate at which the climate is changing and potentially shifting parasite distributions and abundances. We sampled a bird community on Prince of Wales Island in southern Alaska, United States, to test for the abundance and richness of haemosporidian and trypanosomatid parasites in this understudied region. We tested for parasites in 67 archived tissue samples of 18 bird species, of which five had not been previously tested for haemosporidians and 11 had not been sampled for trypanosomatids using molecular methods. We recovered two novel mitochondrial genetic lineages of haemosporidians (genera Haemoproteus and Leucocytozoon), and three novel 18S rRNA genotypes belonging to Trypanosoma of uncertain species-level affinities. Surprisingly, we also identified a trypanosomatid from the genus Zelonia, a group of monoxenous parasites of insects, from an avian tissue. While this anomalous record may have been the result of environmental contamination, it nonetheless reflects the first record of Zelonia in the entire Nearctic region.
生物多样性调查仍然是描述全球寄生虫物种丰富度的关键工具。在世界高纬度地区，由于气候变化迅速且可能导致寄生虫分布和丰度发生变化，描述寄生虫生物多样性尤为重要。我们对美国阿拉斯加南部威尔士王子岛上的鸟类群落进行了采样，以检测这个研究较少地区的血孢子虫和锥虫寄生虫的丰度和丰富度。我们对18种鸟类的67份存档组织样本进行了寄生虫检测，其中5种鸟类此前未进行过血孢子虫检测，11种鸟类未使用分子方法对锥虫进行采样。我们发现了两种新的血孢子虫线粒体遗传谱系（血变原虫属和白细胞虫属），以及三种属于锥虫属的新的18S rRNA基因型，其物种水平亲缘关系尚不确定。令人惊讶的是，我们还从鸟类组织中鉴定出一种来自泽洛尼亚属的锥虫，该属是昆虫的单宿主寄生虫。虽然这一异常记录可能是环境污染的结果，但它仍然反映了泽洛尼亚属在整个新北区的首次记录。
