Between- and within-population drivers of haemosporidian prevalence and diversity in American robins (Turdus migratorius)
Data files
Jun 04, 2025 version files 63.10 KB
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Jahn_et_al_2025_JAV.csv
61.07 KB
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README.md
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Abstract
Avian haemosporidians are a diverse group of parasites that infect birds worldwide and have been a major focus of research for decades. Yet, few studies have identified the drivers of infection at the intraspecific host level. We aimed to study the drivers of prevalence and diversity of haemosporidian parasites infecting a common North American songbird species, the American Robin (Turdus migratorius), which breeds across most of the continent. We found little seasonal variation in haemosporidian prevalence in robins, although we detected a significantly positive relationship between robin breeding latitude and co-infection with different haemosporidian parasite lineages. Additionally, robins infected with Plasmodium had a substantially better body condition than those of uninfected robins, which could be due to migratory culling. We detected 31 haemosporidian lineages among the robins we sampled, of which eight were novel. When matched against known haemosporidian lineages, our results suggest that robins harbor a higher diversity of haemosporidian parasites than previously known. The results of this study suggest that comparisons of common, widespread bird species such as robins across their range could help unveil novel aspects of the haemosporidian-host relationship and how such a relationship may change under current and future rapid environmental change.
Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.mcvdnck8z
Description of the data and file structure
Data includes American robin banding data, haemosporidian infection status data, and geographic assignment data using feather hydrogen isotopes.
Files and variables
File: Jahn_et_al_2025_JAV.csv
Description: American robin capture, haemosporidian, and isotopic data
Variables
- Band: individual bird ID (categorical)
- Band.Date: date of capture in MM/DD/YYYY format
- year: capture year (numeric)
- month: capture month (numeric)
- day: capture day of the month (numeric)
- Season: derived season from capture date (categorical)
- State: categorical US state of capture (Indiana, Alaska)
- long: longitude of capture site (numeric)
- lat: latitude of capture site (numeric)
- Age: bird age class (after hatch year, hatch year; categorical)
- Sex: bird sex (male, female, unknown; categorical)
- Breeding: binary if the bird was in breeding condition (categorical)
- Mass: scaled body mass (original data in grams)
- Wing: scaled wing chord length (original data in mm)
- resid: residuals from a sex-specific regression of mass and wing chord
- Breeding.origin: breeding origin of birds (categorical)
- Lat_max_GSP: estimated maximum breeding latitude (numeric)
- Lat_Range: estimated range of breeding latitude (numeric)
- sample_type: blood sample type (whole blood, red blood cells; categorical)
- Infection: haemosporidian infection type (single, double, triple; categorical)
- Diag: binary haemosporidian positivity
- Diag_P: binary Plasmodium positivity
- Diag_H: binary Haemoproteus positivity
- Diag_L: binary Leucocytozoon positivity
- Coinf: binary coinfection with at least two lineages
- Lineage.1.Name: name of first haemosporidian lineage
- Lineage.2.Name: name of second haemosporidian lineage
- Lineage.3.Name: name of third haemosporidian lineage