Prevalence and composition of haemosporidians in an avian community from a World Heritage area: Associations with host foraging strata and forest regeneration

• Published in: Acta tropica 2024-09, Vol.257, p.107286, Article 107286
• Main Authors: De La Torre, Gabriel Massaccesi, Kirchgatter, Karin, Anjos, Carolina Clares dos, Manica, Lilian Tonelli, Campião, Karla Magalhães
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Antonina; Avian malaria; Bayes Theorem; Bernoulli distribution; Bird Diseases - epidemiology; Bird Diseases - parasitology; Birds - parasitology; blood; Brazil; Brazil - epidemiology; Disease ecology; forest birds; forest restoration; forest succession; Forests; Haemoproteus; Haemosporida - genetics; Haemosporida - isolation & purification; land use change; life history; linear models; natural regeneration; Neotropics; nests; parasites; Phylogeny; Plasmodium; Plasmodium - classification; Plasmodium - isolation & purification; Prevalence; probability; Protozoan Infections, Animal - epidemiology; Protozoan Infections, Animal - parasitology; secondary forests; Serra do Mar; species; Vector-borne parasite
• ISSN: 0001-706X; 1873-6254; 1873-6254
• DOI: 10.1016/j.actatropica.2024.107286

•Deforestation and land conversion can outbreak vector-borne diseases.•There are lack of studies relating forest succession and vector-borne parasites.•Plasmodium tend to infect birds from secondary forest at intermediate succession.•Bird foraging strata is also relevant to Plasmodium infection. Forest regeneration is becoming a powerful tool to combat land conversion which covers 30 % of the Neotropical territory. However, little is known about the effect of forest regeneration on vector-borne diseases. Here, we describe the haemosporidian lineage composition across a successional gradient within an Atlantic Forest bird community. We test whether forest successional stages, in addition to host life history traits affect haemosporidian infection probability. We sampled birds at 16 sampling units with different successional stages between 2017 and 2018 within a forest remnant located in Antonina, Paraná, Brazil. We captured bird individuals using mist-nets, identified them to the species level, and collected blood samples to detect and identify Plasmodium and Haemoproteus lineages based on molecular analysis. We used a Bayesian phylogenetic linear model with a Bernoulli distribution to test whether the haemosporidian infection probability is affected by nest type, foraging stratum, and forest successional stage. We captured 322 bird individuals belonging to 52 species and 21 families. We found 31 parasite lineages and an overall haemosporidian prevalence of 23.9 %, with most infections being caused by Plasmodium (21.7 % of prevalence). The Plasmodium probability of infection was associated with forest successional stage and bird foraging stratum. Birds from the secondary forest in an intermediate stage of succession are more likely to be infected by the parasites than birds from the primary forests (β = 1.21, 95 % CI = 0.11 – 2.43), birds from upper strata exhibit a lower probability of infection than birds from lower foraging strata (β = -1.81, 95 % CI = -3.80 – -0.08). Nest type did not affect the Plasmodium probability of infection. Our results highlight the relevance of forest succession on haemosporidian infection dynamics, which is particularly relevant in a world where natural regeneration is the main tool used in forest restoration. [Display omitted]