Prevalence and Diversity of Avian Malaria Parasites in North American Raptors

• Dominic Carrea, Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Delaware

• Vincenzo Ellis, Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, University of Delaware
• Greg Shriver, Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, University of Delaware

As temperatures rise from climate change, dipteran vector distributions and the infectious diseases they carry may shift drastically. Of these infectious diseases, avian malaria is one that may see this sort of dramatic shift in distribution. A relative of human malaria, avian malaria is caused by dipteran-transmitted parasitic protozoans in the order Haemosporida. Within this order, the parasites that cause avian malaria in birds are found within the Plasmodium, Haemoproteus, and Leucocytozoon genera. While the diversity of avian malaria parasites has been extensively studied in songbirds, raptors (hawks, falcons, eagles, owls, vultures) have received less attention. We sought to fill that gap in knowledge by characterizing the prevalence and diversity of avian malaria parasites in raptors at multiple locations across the United States. In total, we tested samples from 231 individual raptors across 19 raptor species for avian malaria. The first protocol we used was a multiplex PCR to identify infected samples. Afterwards, we used a nested PCR protocol and Sanger sequencing technique to detect the parasite mitochondrial cytochrome b gene and identify parasite genetic lineages. Overall, we found 61 of the 231 raptors (26%) to be infected with avian malaria parasites from 13 different genetic lineages in the Plasmodium, Haemoproteus, and Leucocytozoon genera. We then compared the lineages and their host distributions in our dataset with records from a public database (MalAvi). We determined that many lineages are generalists that infect many species. We also recorded new hosts for several lineages, some of which had not been previously known to infect raptors. Our data are a first step in better understanding the current distributions of avian malaria parasites in raptors and will be crucial for detecting future climate-induced parasite distribution shifts.