Migratory birds breeding in Europe often have chronic malaria infections which are assumed to have been picked up on their wintering grounds in Africa. But we know little about their effects in Africa where it’s assumed acute infections might occur. Dr Marjorie Sorensen studied willow warblers during her PhD and found, surprisingly, no obvious ill-effects of malaria parasites on the birds wintering in Zambia. Read more in the original paper by Marjorie Sorensen, Muhammad Asghar, Staffan Bensch, Graham Fairhurst, Susanne Jenni-Eiermann and Claire Spottiswoode, available open access in Journal of Avian Biology.
New paper on coevolution and chase-away evolution
Our paper “Chase-away evolution maintains imperfect mimicry in a brood parasite–host system despite rapid evolution of mimics” has been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.