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Haemosporidian infections in wild populations of Podarcis muralis from the Italian Peninsula

Storniolo, Federico
;Coladonato, Alan J;Mangiacotti, Marco;Sacchi, Roberto
2022-01-01
2022
Environment/Ecology is a broad category covering interrelated disciplines. It includes resources dealing with pure and applied ecology, ecological modelling and engineering, ecotoxicology, and evolutionary ecology. In environmental science, some of the many areas covered are environmental contamination and toxicology, environmental health, monitoring, technology, geology, and management. Other fields covered are soil science and conservation, water resources research and engineering, climate change, and biodiversity conservation. Regional naturalist resources are also covered here.
PARASITOLOGY
sì
WOS:000804448200001
2-s2.0-85131052307
Esperti anonimi
Inglese
Internazionale
STAMPA
1-22
22
35570677
Parasites can significantly influence the ecology, behaviour and physiology of their hosts sometimes with remarkable effects on their survivorship. However, non-virulent or endemic parasites or those not associated with obvious clinical disease have been partly neglected in the past decades comparatively to the most pathogenic ones. Apicomplexa are an important example of blood parasites that have been broadly investigated, albeit although it can be difficult to determine the effects of infections at the population level, especially in widespread species. Such is the case of the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis). We investigated 61 populations across Italy between 2008 to 2017 and recorded snout-vent length, latitude, date of collection and took blood samples for parasite count. We modelled parasite prevalence and load in a Bayesian framework. Parasites were present in all populations but one and in 13 of them all individuals were parasitized. We recorded almost identical responses for probability of infection and parasite load in both sexes, directly proportional to body size and inversely proportional to latitude, with a peak in cooler months. Therefore haemosporidians can be very common in P.muralis, although their presence can vary significantly. Moreover, such a high prevalencea so high prevalence makes it necessary to investigate to what extent haemosporidians affect hosts’ survivorship, taking into consideration abiotic and biotic factors like temperature, hormone levels and immune response.
Parasites, prevalence, distribution, Italy
no
6
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
262
Storniolo, Federico; Zuffi, Marco A L; Coladonato, Alan J; Mangiacotti, Marco; Scali, Stefano; Sacchi, Roberto
1 Contributo su Rivista::1.1 Articolo in rivista
none
1.1 Articolo in rivista
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11571/1455283
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