Sympatry in a nightingale contact zone has no effect on host-specific blood parasite prevalence and lineage diversity

William Jones; Radka Reifová; Jiří Reif; Petr Synek; Michal Šíma; Pavel Munclinger

doi:10.1016/j.ijpara.2024.03.002

Sympatry in a nightingale contact zone has no effect on host-specific blood parasite prevalence and lineage diversity

Int J Parasitol. 2024 Mar 7:S0020-7519(24)00052-3. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpara.2024.03.002. Online ahead of print.

Authors

William Jones¹, Radka Reifová², Jiří Reif³, Petr Synek⁴, Michal Šíma⁵, Pavel Munclinger²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Evolutionary Zoology and Human Biology, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary. Electronic address: wjonesdebrecen@gmail.com.
² Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czechia.
³ Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czechia; Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Palacky University, Olomouc, Czechia.
⁴ Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czechia; Biodviser Ltd. Enterprise House 2 Pass Street Oldham, Manchester OL9 6HZ, United Kingdom.
⁵ Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czechia; Department of Nanotoxicology and Molecular Epidemiology, Institute of Experimental Medicine, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia.

PMID: 38460721
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpara.2024.03.002

Abstract

Parasites are a key driving force behind many ecological and evolutionary processes. Prevalence and diversity of parasites, as well as their effects on hosts, are not uniform across host species. As such, the potential parasite spillover between species can significantly influence outcomes of interspecific interactions. We screened two species of Luscinia nightingales for haemosporidian blood parasites (Plasmodium, Leucocytozoon and Haemoproteus) along an approximately 3000 km transect in Europe, incorporating areas of host distant allopatry, close allopatry and sympatry. We found significant differences in infection rates between the two host species, with common nightingales having much lower parasite prevalence than thrush nightingales (36.7% versus 83.8%). This disparity was mostly driven by Haemoproteus prevalence, which was significantly higher in thrush nightingales while common nightingales had a small, but significantly higher, Plasmodium prevalence. Furthermore, we found no effect of proximity to the contact zone on infection rate in either host species. Despite having lower infection prevalence, common nightingales were infected with a significantly higher diversity of parasite lineages than thrush nightingales, and lineage assemblages differed considerably between the two species, even in sympatry. This pattern was mostly driven by the large diversity of comparatively rare lineages, while the most abundant lineages were shared between the two host species. This suggests that, despite the close evolutionary relationships between the two nightingales, there are significant differences in parasite prevalence and diversity, regardless of the distance from the contact zone. This suggests that spillover of haemosporidian blood parasites is unlikely to contribute towards interspecific interactions in this system.

Keywords: Birds; Community ecology; Disease biology; Host-parasite interactions; Hybridisation; Parasitology.