Beta diversity, prevalence, and specificity of avian haemosporidian parasites throughout the annual cycle of Chilean Elaenia ( Elaenia chilensis), a Neotropical austral migrant

ALAN FECCHIO; RAPHAEL DIAS; GABRIEL M. DE LA TORRE; JEFFREY A. BELL; M. CECILIA SAGARIO; CRISTIAN A. GOROSITO; CAROLINA C. DOS ANJOS; CAMILE LUGARINI; VITOR Q. PIACENTINI; JOAO B. PINHO; KARIN KIRCHGATTER; ROBERT RICKLEFS; FABIO SCHUNCK; VICTOR R. CUETO

PARASITOLOGY

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2022

0031-1820

Migratory birds are implicated in dispersing haemosporidian parasites over great geographic distances, but their role in spreading these vectortransmitted blood parasites to resident avian host populations across their breeding and wintering grounds is not well understood. We studiedavian haemosporidian parasites in 10 populations of a long-distance Neotropical austral migrant species, the Chilean Elaenia, to determine local parasite transmission among resident sympatric host species in the elaenia’s distributional range across South America. We sampled 371 Chilean Elaenias and 1,818 birds representing 243 additional sympatric species from Brazilian wintering grounds to Argentinian breeding grounds. The 23 haemosporidian lineages found in Chilean Elaenias exhibited considerable variation in distribution, specialization, and turnover across the 10 avian assemblages in South America. Parasite lineage dissimilarity increased with geographic distance, and infection probability by Parahaemoproteus decreased in localities harboring a more diverse haemosporidian fauna. Furthermore, blood smears from migrating Chilean Elaenias and local resident avian host species did not contain infective stages of Leucocytozoon, demonstrating that transmission did not take place in the Brazilian stopover site. Our analyses confirm that this Neotropical austral migrant connects avian host assemblages and transports haemosporidian parasites along its distributional range in South America. However, the lack of transmissive stages at stopover site and the infrequent parasite lineage sharing between migratory host populations and residents at breeding and wintering grounds suggests that Chilean Elaenias do not play asignificant role in dispersing haemosporidian parasites, nor do they influence local transmission across South America.