TY - JOUR
T1 - Molecular ecological insights into neotropical bird-tick interactions
AU - Miller, Matthew J.
AU - Esser, Helen J.
AU - Loaiza, Jose R.
AU - Herre, Edward Allen
AU - Aguilar, Celestino
AU - Quintero, Diomedes
AU - Alvarez, Eric
AU - Bermingham, Eldredge
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Panama’s Environmental Agency (MiAmbiente/ANAM) for granting us bird and tick collecting permits, without which this study would not have been possible. We thank the members of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Bird Collection field team, as well as B. Voirin and B. Hirsch for providing adult ticks used in this study, and P. Jansen, K. López, and an anonymous reviewer for comments that improved the manuscript. This study was partially funded by an inter-agency award from the US Centers for Disease Control (“Effect of Anthropogenic Climate Change on the Ecology of Zoonotic and Vector-borne Diseases”; http://www.cdc.gov/ ), and a Smithsonian Grand Challenges Award (“Tropical Vertebrate Diversity Loss and the Emergence of Tick-borne Diseases”; https://www.si.edu/consortia ). HJE was supported by the graduate school of Production Ecology and Resource Conservation of Wageningen University ( https://www.pe-rc.nl/ ). The STRI Bird Collection was supported by an NIH/NSF Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases Award from the Fogarty International Center (3R01-TW005869-05S1; http://www.fic.nih.gov/ ). DNA barcode sequencing was supported from a grant from the Smithsonian Institution's DNA Barcoding Network ( http://barcoding.si.edu/ ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Public Library of Science. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/5/1
Y1 - 2016/5/1
N2 - In the tropics, ticks parasitize many classes of vertebrate hosts. However, because many tropical tick species are only identifiable in the adult stage, and these adults usually parasitize mammals, most attention on the ecology of tick-host interactions has focused on mammalian hosts. In contrast, immature Neotropical ticks are often found on wild birds, yet difficulties in identifying immatures hinder studies of birds' role in tropical tick ecology and tick-borne disease transmission. In Panama, we found immature ticks on 227 out of 3,498 individually-sampled birds representing 93 host species (24% of the bird species sampled, and 13% of the Panamanian land bird fauna). Tick parasitism rates did not vary with rainfall or temperature, but did vary significantly with several host ecological traits. Likewise, Neotropical-Nearctic migratory birds were significantly less likely to be infested than resident species. Using a molecular library developed from morphologically-identified adult ticks specifically for this study, we identified eleven tick species parasitizing birds, indicating that a substantial portion of the Panamanian avian species pool is parasitized by a diversity of tick species. Tick species that most commonly parasitized birds had the widest diversity of avian hosts, suggesting that immature tick species are opportunistic bird parasites. Although certain avian ecological traits are positively associated with parasitism, we found no evidence that individual tick species show specificity to particular avian host ecological traits. Finally, our data suggest that the four principal vectors of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in the Neotropics rarely, if ever, parasitize Panamanian birds. However, other tick species that harbor newly-discovered rickettsial parasites of unknown pathogenicity are frequently found on these birds. Given our discovery of broad interaction between Panamanian tick and avian biodiversity, future work on tick ecology and the dynamics of emerging tropical tick-borne pathogens should explicitly consider wild bird as hosts.
AB - In the tropics, ticks parasitize many classes of vertebrate hosts. However, because many tropical tick species are only identifiable in the adult stage, and these adults usually parasitize mammals, most attention on the ecology of tick-host interactions has focused on mammalian hosts. In contrast, immature Neotropical ticks are often found on wild birds, yet difficulties in identifying immatures hinder studies of birds' role in tropical tick ecology and tick-borne disease transmission. In Panama, we found immature ticks on 227 out of 3,498 individually-sampled birds representing 93 host species (24% of the bird species sampled, and 13% of the Panamanian land bird fauna). Tick parasitism rates did not vary with rainfall or temperature, but did vary significantly with several host ecological traits. Likewise, Neotropical-Nearctic migratory birds were significantly less likely to be infested than resident species. Using a molecular library developed from morphologically-identified adult ticks specifically for this study, we identified eleven tick species parasitizing birds, indicating that a substantial portion of the Panamanian avian species pool is parasitized by a diversity of tick species. Tick species that most commonly parasitized birds had the widest diversity of avian hosts, suggesting that immature tick species are opportunistic bird parasites. Although certain avian ecological traits are positively associated with parasitism, we found no evidence that individual tick species show specificity to particular avian host ecological traits. Finally, our data suggest that the four principal vectors of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in the Neotropics rarely, if ever, parasitize Panamanian birds. However, other tick species that harbor newly-discovered rickettsial parasites of unknown pathogenicity are frequently found on these birds. Given our discovery of broad interaction between Panamanian tick and avian biodiversity, future work on tick ecology and the dynamics of emerging tropical tick-borne pathogens should explicitly consider wild bird as hosts.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0155989
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0155989
M3 - Article
C2 - 27203693
AN - SCOPUS:84991518853
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 5
M1 - e0155989
ER -