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College of Arts & Sciences

Marissa Henry

College of Arts & Sciences

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Environmental Science

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jason Weckstein Biodiversity, Earth, & Environmental Science

Janice Dispoto Co-Mentor

Seasonality in Haemosporidian Infection Prevalence in Migratory and Resident Birds of Southeastern Pennsylvania

Three genera of protozoan parasites in the order haemosporida are known to cause malaria or malaria-like infections in birds. Each of these haemosporidian genera is transmitted to birds via Dipteran vectors: mosquitos transmit Plasmodium, biting midges and hippoboscid flies transmit Haemoproteus, and black flies transmit Leucocytozoon. I analyzed 1,105 avian blood samples collected from migratory and resident birds at Rushton Woods in Newtown, PA, during the spring, summer, and fall of 2015 and 2016. I studied whether the proportion of hosts infected varied across seasons. After extracting the DNA, I conducted two nested PCR screenings including one aimed at Haemoproteus and Plasmodium and the other for Leucocytozoon. This protocol amplifies a fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene for haemosporidians when an infection is present. The positive samples were sequenced, reconciled into consensus sequences using Geneious, and compared to published DNA sequences in the MalAvi database for identification. I focused analyses on some particularly common groups of hosts. I determined that Plasmodium and Leucocytozoon infections are most prevalent in fall, whereas Haemoproteus has the highest infection rate in spring.

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