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Invasive avian malaria as an emerging parasitic disease in native birds of Peru

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Abstract

Some species of avian malaria parasites are invaders and responsible for diversity losses worldwide. Here we analyze the prevalence and genetic characterization of avian malaria and related haemosporidian parasites in Neotropical birds from two different regions of Peru. We detected an overall prevalence of 32.4 % comprising 12 infected bird species. The pathogen Plasmodium relictum SGS1 was widespread and the most prevalent parasite found in our study (39 % of the total infections), infecting 8 host species in both localities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of this invasive pathogen in the mainland Americas, thus representing a possible menace to over one-third of all bird species in the world.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to many students and researchers for collaboration in collecting samples during avian malaria training workshops in Peru. Two anonymous reviewers provided suggestions to improve the manuscript. This study was funded in part by the US National Science Foundation sponsored Research Coordination Network for Haemosporida of Terrestrial Vertebrates (malariarch.org, NSF 0954891), and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (CGL2012-36665). AM and LGL were supported by grants from Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (JC2011-0405 and BES-2010-030295, respectively). Technical and human support provided by Facility of Bioscience Applied Techniques of SAIUEx (financed by UEX, Junta de Extremadura, MICINN, FEDER and FSE). The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. All the experiments comply with the current laws of Peru, where the experiments were performed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, University of Extremadura, 06071, Badajoz, Spain

    Alfonso Marzal & Luz García-Longoria

  2. Laboratorio de Invertebrados, Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Ricardo Palma, Lima 33, Peru

    Jorge M. Cárdenas Callirgos

  3. Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, 94132, USA

    Ravinder NM Sehgal

Authors
  1. Alfonso Marzal
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  2. Luz García-Longoria
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  3. Jorge M. Cárdenas Callirgos
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  4. Ravinder NM Sehgal
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Correspondence to Alfonso Marzal.

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Marzal, A., García-Longoria, L., Cárdenas Callirgos, J.M. et al. Invasive avian malaria as an emerging parasitic disease in native birds of Peru. Biol Invasions 17, 39–45 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-014-0718-x

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