ArticlePloS one2020
Physiological and morphological correlates of blood parasite infection in urban and non-urban house sparrow populations.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Subtle stressors-Strong responses. Consistent negative effects of avian blood parasites on phenotypic and demographic traits across songbirds.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Pooled it
- The impact of urbanization on health depends on the health metric, life stage and level of urbanization: a global meta-analysis on avian species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Adjusting to urban stress: How Eurasian tree sparrows modulate multiple physiological and nutritional markers across sexes.Current zoology · 2025Article
- Hemoparasites in Wild Birds: A Systematic Review of Their Ecology and Clinical Implications.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
- Different age, different blood parasites -International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2025Review
- Site-Specific Impacts of Urbanisation on Annual Survival of a Forest Bird.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- The prevalence and immune response to coinfection by avian haemosporidians in wild Eurasian blackbirdsParasitology · 2024Article
- The effect of model structure and data availability on Usutu virus dynamics at three biological scales.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Differential effects of environmental climatic variables on parasite abundances in blue tit nests during a decade.Integrative zoology · 2022Review
- Avian haemosporidia in native and invasive sparrows at an Afrotropical region.Parasitology research · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In the last decade, house sparrow populations have shown a general decline, especially in cities. Avian malaria has been recently suggested as one of the potential causes of this decline, and its detrimental effects could be exacerbated in urban habitats. It was initially thought that avian malaria parasites would not have large negative effects on wild birds because of their long co-evolution with their hosts. However, it is now well-documented that they can have detrimental effects at both the primo- and chronical infection stages. In this study, we examined avian malaria infection and its physiological and morphological consequences in four populations of wild house sparrows (2 urban and 2 rural). We did not find any relationship between the proportions of infected individuals and the urbanisation score calculated for our populations. However, we observed that the proportion of infected individuals increased during the course of the season, and that juveniles were less infected than adults. We did not detect a strong effect of malaria infection on physiological, morphological and condition indexes. Complex parasite dynamics and the presence of confounding factors could have masked the potential effects of infection. Thus, longitudinal and experimental studies are needed to understand the evolutionary ecology of this very common, but still poorly understood, wild bird parasite.
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