Host associations and evolutionary relationships of avian blood parasites from West Africa

The host specificity of blood parasites recovered from a survey of 527 birds in Cameroon and Gabon was examined at several levels within an evolutionary framework. Unique mitochondrial lineages of Haemoproteus were recovered from an average of 1.3 host species (maximum=3) and 1.2 host families (maximum=3) while lineages of Plasmodium were recovered from an average of 2.5 species (maximum=27) and 1.6 families (maximum=9). Averaged within genera, lineages of both Plasmodium and Haemoproteus were constrained in their host distribution relative to random expectations. However, while several individual lineages within both genera exhibited significant host constraint, host breadth varied widely among related lineages, particularly within the genus Plasmodium. Several lineages of Plasmodium exhibited extreme generalist host-parasitism strategies while other lineages appeared to have been constrained to certain host families over recent evolutionary history. Sequence data from two nuclear genes recovered from a limited sample of Plasmodium parasites indicated that, at the resolution of this study, inferences regarding host breadth were unlikely to be grossly affected by the use of parasite mitochondrial lineages as a proxy for biological species. The use of divergent host-parasitism strategies among closely related parasite lineages suggests that host range is a relatively labile character. Since host specificity may also influence parasite virulence, these results argue for considering the impact of haematozoa on avian hosts on a lineage-specific basis.