Mentor: Ryan Shannon, Ph.D.

Host specificity is known to be a major contributor to parasite transmission and prevalence. It acts as the compatibility filter for a parasite, determining if a parasite can survive once it enters a host (1). Host specificity has many facets. Traditional host specificity looks at the number of unique hosts that a parasite can infect. Evolutionary host specificity looks deeper and compares the taxonomy of the hosts (2). Parasites that are generalists can infect many host species that are less evolutionarily related, whereas specialist parasites infect few, closely related hosts (Figure 1). The 3 genera of avian malaria, Plasmodium, Haemoproteus, and Leucocytozoon, vary in their hosts and host specificity, giving a useful model to study host specificity and its effects on host health. Plasmodium is often considered the most generalist of the three (4).

In this study, we attempted to categorize the host specificity of lineages found in the ongoing survey of avian blood parasites by the Avian Research and Education Institute (AREI) and the Love lab. We also compared host specificity to the likelihood of a lineage being part of a co-infection (a bird found with multiple parasite lineages) to determine if generalist or specialist parasites were more likely to be involved.

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