Many
organisms obtain energy and nutrients by feeding on birds.
If they are animals big enough to kill and devour a bird all
at once, the consumers are called predators. If the
consumers are small animals that live on or in birds
indefinitely, they are called parasites. Parasites may or
may not have a sufficient impact on a bird to make it sick.
When a bird's tenants are microorganisms -- protozoans,
bacteria, fungi, viruses, or rickettsiae (tiny bacteria-like
organisms) -- that cause diseases, we call them
pathogens. There is a great variety of
avian diseases. Birds get malaria (caused by close relatives
of the protozoans that cause human malaria), aspergillosis
(a fungal infection), tuberculosis (not the same pathogen
that causes human tuberculosis), Newcastle disease (viral),
fowl plague (viral), avian pox (viral), avian influenza
(viral), and hundreds of other infections. People cannot
catch most avian diseases, but birds can serve as hosts of
pathogens that cause serious human illnesses. The rickettsia
that causes psittacosis is sometimes contracted by people
from pets in the parrot family (Psittacidae), but the
disease name is misleading, as the pathogen has been found
in at least 140 species of 17 orders of birds. Psittacosis
may be fatal in people. So may the equine encephalitis
virus, for which some 80 species of North American birds can
serve as reservoirs. The virus can be carried from bird to
person by mosquitoes. Migrating birds have been implicated
in the transport of virulent encephalitis strains between
continents. Birds usually do not suffer
heavily from mosquito-transmitted viruses, but there are
exceptions. The mosquito species, Culex pipiens,
accidentally introduced into the Hawaiian Islands in 1826,
was an agent (vector) for transmitting the avian pox virus,
malarial protozoans, and other pathogens. Many lowland
species of the wonderful Hawaiian honeyeaters proved
extremely susceptible to the pathogens and were wiped out;
highland forms were spared because the mosquito could not
survive at altitudes above 2,000 feet. Birds also are dined upon by
a great variety of parasites. Chewing bird-lice (Mallophaga)
invade plumage and live on accumulated "dandruff," on blood,
or on other fluids. Fleas, louse flies (Hippoboscidae),
small bugs (Hemiptera, relatives of bedbugs), ticks, and
mites suck blood. Internally, birds host roundworms,
tapeworms, flukes and so on, which live either in the
digestive tract or in the blood vessels. Little is known
about the impact of parasites on natural populations of
birds, but there are indications that it can be
considerable, especially in populations of colonially
nesting species. For instance, biologists
Charles and Mary Brown of Princeton University found that
the number of "swallow bugs" (bedbug-like parasites) per
nest went up as the size of Cliff Swallow colonies
increased. In addition, the weight of ten-day-old chicks
declined as the number of bugs per nestling rose. By
fumigating some nests and leaving others infested, they
showed that the bugs also increased fledgling mortality in
large colonies but not in small ones. In response to the
threat of the parasites, the swallows apparently construct
new nests (rather than reuse old ones) in large colonies
more frequently than in the less heavily infested small
colonies. The swallow may also switch sites in alternate
years (or return to the same sites even less frequently),
leaving its parasites to starve in empty nests in the
meantime. SEE: Coevolution;
Coloniality;
Nest
Materials;
Nest
Sanitation;
European
Starlings. Copyright
® 1988 by Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin, and Darryl
Wheye.