The effect of habitat quality on the blood parasite assemblage in understorey avian insectivores in the Eastern Himalaya, India
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The anthropogenic alteration of natural habitats can modify interactions between various biotic and abiotic factors. The prevalence of avian blood parasites in free‐living host species in the tropics has shown contrasting patterns in altered landscapes. Here, we investigate these potential associations between understorey insectivorous bird species of the Eastern Himalayas and avian haemosporidians in primary and selectively logged forests. We describe patterns related to host–parasite associations, host life‐history traits and host specificity in primary and logged forests. Using parasite‐specific cytochrome‐b gene markers, we screened 545 individual birds from nine families, 33 genera and 57 species. Of these, 34.67% were infected with Leucocytozoon spp., 13.94% with Haemoproteus spp., 3.30% with Plasmodium spp. and 8.44% with co‐infections. We found that parasite prevalence did not change with logging; however, host specificity and life‐history traits did have associations with infection prevalence. We report a vertical stratification in genera‐specific infections driven by vector groups – upper canopy and midstorey foragers had high Leucocytozoon and Haemoproteus prevalence, respectively. In addition, species foraging in mixed‐species flocks showed increased infection risk with Leucocytozoon, whereas solitary foragers had a high prevalence of Plasmodium. This study also highlights that avian parasite lineages are genetically more distinct in primary forest than in logged forest plots. Although our study demonstrates no influence of selective logging on parasite prevalence, it does reflect a positive influence of host abundance and logged habitats on parasite diversity. Our work reveals valuable patterns in terms of phylospecificity and genetic variation in parasite assemblages. Further research with a focus on parasite intensity and vector abundance will help us to understand anthropogenic impacts on parasite transmission dynamics in Eastern Himalayan birds.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".