Emerging helminthiases of song thrush ( Turdus philomelos ) in Central Europe
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HELMINTHOLOGY - ORIGINAL PAPER
Emerging helminthiases of song thrush (Turdus philomelos) in Central Europe Jiljí Sitko 1 & Petr Heneberg 2 Received: 19 May 2020 / Accepted: 27 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Turdus philomelos is a common Western Palearctic thrush species of forests and agricultural landscapes, where it relies on the presence of hedgerows, patches of trees, and shrubs. In the present study, we address long-term changes in component communities of trematodes in T. philomelos across the timespan of over half a century. Based on our preliminary observations, we hypothesized that component communities of trematodes in T. philomelos in the study area are more diverse and species-rich compared with several decades ago. In the 1961–2019, we performed full-body necropsies of T. philomelos, which originated from the southern Czech Republic, and examined them for the presence of trematodes. We compared the trematode species richness and diversity of the analyzed component communities. The number of trematode species per host steadily increased in time in adult females and males. In juveniles, the highest numbers of trematode species per host were reached already in 1961– 1990, then dropped and slowly raised up again in the latter time periods. The newly accumulated evidence suggests that trematodes with intermediate hosts previously restricted to T. philomelos wintering grounds increased in abundance in the study area. Some of them (Morishitium polonicum, Psilotornus confertus) sporadically appeared in juveniles or first-year birds, from which they were previously completely absent. Some of the spreading species, such as Lutztrema attenuatum, are present in high prevalence and high intensities of infection. Yet unknown part of observed changes could be related to changes in food composition; however, direct evidence for changes in T. philomelos diet is lacking despite clear evidence for a decline in earthworms in agricultural landscapes. Keywords Agricultural landscapes . Common birds . Hedgerows . Helminths . Population dynamics . Trematoda
Introduction Ecosystem functions of trematodes consist of structuring communities by acting simultaneously at multiple trophic levels, stabilizing the interactions, regulating the host populations, and altering energy transfer (Lafferty et al. 2008; Lefèvre
Section Editor: Elizabeth Marie Warburton Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-06911-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Petr Heneberg [email protected] 1
Comenius Museum, Moravian Ornithological Station, Přerov, Czech Republic
2
Charles University, Third Faculty of Medicine, Ruská 87, 100 00 Prague, Czech Republic
et al. 2009; Fenton and Perkins 2010; Sato et al. 2011; Preston et al. 2013). Longitudinal studies of trematode communities in birds are scarce and suggest the decline in most of the examined hosts (Sitko and Heneberg 2020; Sitko un
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