Urbanization and blood parasite infections affect the body condition of wild birds

Jiménez‐Peñuela, Jéssica; Ferraguti, Martina; Puente, Josué Martínez‐de la; Soriguer, Ramón C.; Figuerola, Jordi

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.203

Cited by 48 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…As suggested by Jiménez-Peñuela et al in their study [45], the remaining infected birds sampled could be the highest quality individuals, in which physiological costs of infection are below the detection threshold. In support with this hypothesis, one of the few significant results that we found was that infected juveniles were in better condition than uninfected juveniles, such as in [45]. This makes sense because juveniles are more likely to be primo-infected, and infected at higher intensities, than adults [1].…”

Section: Underlying Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…Intricate and inconsistent findings were previously reported in several studies [6,7,14,17,20,84,89,90,103,104]. For example, Jiménez-Peñuela et al found that infected house sparrows are in better condition than uninfected ones in wild populations [45], while Marzal et al found the opposite pattern in wild house martins [27]. In addition, experimental captive studies did not find relationship between avian malaria infection status in several bird species [20,105].…”

Section: Relationships Between Parasite Infection Condition and Mormentioning

confidence: 88%

“…These changes have been related to low food availability and quality [43,44,50, but see 51], high rates of pollution [47,51], disturbance (traffic noise for example [52]), or even to a recent increase in predator pressure [53,54]. However, the potential impact of malaria infection on morphological and physiological attributes still needs to be clarified in wild bird populations (see [45] for a study on house sparrows and see [20] for a study on red-winged blackbirds, Agelaius phoeniceus).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Physiological and morphological correlates of blood parasite infection in urban and non-urban house sparrow populations

Bichet¹,

Brischoux²,

Ribout³

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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In the last decade, house sparrow populations have shown a general decline, especially in cities. Avian malaria has been recently suggested as one of the potential causes of this decline, and its detrimental effects could be exacerbated in urban habitats. It was initially thought that avian malaria parasites would not have large negative effects on wild birds because of their long co-evolution with their hosts. However, it is now well-documented that they can have detrimental effects at both the primo-and chronical infection stages. In this study, we examined avian malaria infection and its physiological and morphological consequences in four populations of wild house sparrows (2 urban and 2 rural). We did not find any relationship between the proportions of infected individuals and the urbanisation score calculated for our populations. However, we observed that the proportion of infected individuals increased during the course of the season, and that juveniles were less infected than adults. We did not detect a strong effect of malaria infection on physiological, morphological and condition indexes. Complex parasite dynamics and the presence of confounding factors could have masked the potential effects of infection. Thus, longitudinal and experimental studies are needed to understand the evolutionary ecology of this very common, but still poorly understood, wild bird parasite.

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Section: Underlying Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 60%

Section: Relationships Between Parasite Infection Condition and Mormentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Physiological and morphological correlates of blood parasite infection in urban and non-urban house sparrow populations

Bichet¹,

Brischoux²,

Ribout³

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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“…Novel, human created environments, such as urban areas, represent a formidable challenge for organisms because the magnitude and peace of the environmental alterations imposed by humans usually exceed their limits of tolerance leading to populations shrinkage and extinction [6,8]. Urban challenges include combating chemical [3], acoustic [9,10] and light pollution [11, 12], human disturbance [6,13], new pathogens [14,15] and predators [16,17], and human infrastructures [16,18]. However, some species are able to overcome these challenges and thrive in urban environments [4,8,13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid behavioural response of urban birds to COVID-19 lockdown

Gordo

Brotons

Herrando

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Biodiversity is threatened by the current exponential growth of urban areas. However, it is still poorly understood how animals can cope with and adapt to these rapid and dramatic transformations of natural environments. The COVID-19 pandemic provides us with a unique opportunity to unveil the adaptive mechanisms involved in this process. Lockdown measures imposed in most countries are causing an unprecedented reduction of human activities giving us an experimental setting to assess the effects of our lifestyle on biodiversity. We studied the birds’ response to the Spanish population lockdown by using more than 200,000 bird records collected by a citizen science project. We compared the occurrence and detectability of birds during the spring 2020 lockdown with baseline data from previous years in the same urban areas and dates. We found that birds did not increase their probability of occurrence in urban areas during the lockdown, refuting the hypothesis that nature has recovered its space in human emptied urban areas. However, we found an increase in bird detectability, especially during early morning, suggesting a rapid change in the birds’ daily routines in response to quitter and less crowded cities. In conclusion, urban birds show high behavioral plasticity to rapidly adapt to novel environmental conditions, as those imposed by the COVID-19.

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“…Many urban animals, however, suffer serious predation by human companion animals such as owned or feral cats and dogs (14)(15)(16). As for parasitism, animals living in urban areas often have poorer body conditions (17,18), are exposed to higher levels of environmental contaminants (19), and can experience higher population densities (20), all of which could enhance parasitic infections (21). Indeed, some urban populations of lizards (22), birds (23) and rodents (24) have higher levels of parasitic infections compared to non-urban populations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Power of Citizen Science to Quantify Ecological Risks in Cities

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Urbanization is an extreme form of habitat modification that can alter ecological relationships among organisms, but these can be hard to study because much of the urban landscape is inaccessible private property. We show that citizen science can be a powerful tool to overcome this challenge. We used photo-vouchered observations submitted to the citizen science platform iNaturalist to assess predation and parasitism across urbanization gradients in a secretive yet widespread species, the Southern Alligator Lizard (Elgaria multicarinata), in Southern California, USA. From photographs, we quantified predation risk by assessing tail injuries and quantified parasitism rates by counting tick loads on lizards.We estimated urbanization intensity by determining percent impervious surface around each lizard observation. We found that tail injuries increased with age of the lizard and with urbanization, suggesting that urban areas are riskier habitats, likely because of elevated populations of predators such as outdoor cats. Conversely, parasitism decreased with urbanization likely due to a loss of mammalian hosts and anti-tick medications used on companion animals. Moreover, our citizen science approach allowed us to generate a large dataset on a secretive species extremely rapidly and at an immense spatial scale that facilitated quantitative measures of urbanization (e.g. percent impervious surface cover) as opposed to 2 qualitative measures (e.g. urban vs rural). This study demonstrates that citizen science is allowing researchers to answer ecological questions that otherwise would go unanswered.

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Urbanization and blood parasite infections affect the body condition of wild birds

Cited by 48 publications

References 68 publications

Physiological and morphological correlates of blood parasite infection in urban and non-urban house sparrow populations

Physiological and morphological correlates of blood parasite infection in urban and non-urban house sparrow populations

Rapid behavioural response of urban birds to COVID-19 lockdown

The Power of Citizen Science to Quantify Ecological Risks in Cities

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