Blood Parasites of Some West African Rainforest Birds

Abstract

ABSTRACT. A total of 969 birds representing 121 species of 21 families from the West African nations of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Ivory Coast were examined for haematozoa using thin blood smears; 277 individuals (28.6%) harbored blood parasites. The parasites identified included species of Haemoproteus (7.7% prevalence), Plasmodium (10.7%), Leucocytozoon (4.6%), and Trypanosoma (7.3%). In addition, microfilariae of filariid nematodes were present in 3.6% of the individuals examined. The birds were collected over a period of 12 years, from 1989-2001, from rainforest and ecotone habitats. We report a relatively high prevalence of parasites in colonial nesting birds, and two species of ground nesting birds. In addition, we compared data from bird species collected at a site identical to a previously published study, and did not find significant differences in parasite prevalence between the two years constituting two different seasons. Our results are also compared to other studies in Africa that implement similar and different methodologies.

Prevalence of blood protozoa in poultry in Tangail, Bangladesh

“…in pigeons (Table 1). More or less similar results were reported by [26] in the central Philippine islands (42%).The lower prevalence was recorded by [27] in three regions of Asia (34.0%), [28] in wetland birds in Bangladesh (29.5%), [29] in Equatorial Guinea and Ivory Coast (28.6%) and [30] in northeastern Mexico (12.8%). These variations among the present and previous studies may be due to the differences in geographic niches, climatic conditions, breed of birds, management factors, availability of vectors and the method of study.…”

Prevalence of malaria parasites in indigenous chickens and ducks in selected districts of Bangladesh

“…However, higher prevalence rate(50.7%) was reported by Dey et al (2008a) in Mymensingh district of Bangladesh and Silva-Iturriza et al(2012) in the central Philippine islands (42.0%). The more or less similar prevalence (29.5%) was recorded by Elahi et al (2014) in wetland birds in Bangladesh, Sehgal et al (2005) in Equatorial Guinea and Ivory Coast (28.6%), and Momin et al (2014) in poultry in Tangail district, Bangladesh (22.7%). These variations might be due to the differences in geographic niches, climatic conditions, breed of birds, management factors, availability of vectors and the method of study.…”

Spatially explicit predictions of blood parasites in a widely distributed African rainforest bird

“…In West Africa, several of these avian species are generalists that can be found in a variety of habitats, including primary rainforest, secondary forest and fragmented deforested areas of the ecotone. One of these species, the olive sunbird (Cyanomitra olivacea; [23,24]), is non-migratory, readily sampled and ubiquitous across the landscape, therefore acting as an excellent model to study the ecology of large-scale infectious disease patterns in Africa [19,20,23,25]. It is clear that distribution of avian haemosporidian parasites can vary on the local scale [14,26], but little information is available regarding the broad-scale environmental factors that can affect and help predict their transmission.…”