Avian parasites, and the diseases they carry, play an important role in shaping the population dynamics of their hosts. Netting birds and extracting blood samples is a difficult process, and as a result, molecular infection analyses often pool several years’ worth of data. This aggregation assumes parasite communities to be fixed over time. Although some avian parasite communities have been shown to be static, others demonstrate turnover and replacement of lineages over time.

As a part of an 11-year study, I quantified the temporal dynamics of malarial parasite lineages infecting common yellowthroats breeding in Saratoga Springs, NY.

I wrote my undergraduate thesis on this work, titled temporal dynamics of malarial parasites infecting common yellowthroats. I mist-netted and bled common yellowthroats, and performed PCR and gel electrophoresis to extract parasite DNA for sequencing.

The p06 Plasmodium lineage was found to have increased in prevalence over the study period. When assessed relative to the longitudinal host health, p06 was characterized to be chronic, high-load, and benign relative to p04, a competing lineage. Further, I investigated samples with co-infections of p06 and p04 and identified a PCR bias for p06. This bias is an artifact which was accounted for in this study but has major implications for similar studies on parasite communities.