by Luisa Harper
Are insects the key
to saving birds?
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| Red-banded Partridge chick. |
Dr Carly Benefer from the University of Plymouth is researching nematode parasites that infect a large variety of birds, though they have a huge impact on game and poultry in particular. The parasite causes gape, a disease that obstructs the trachea of the birds and causes them to gasp for breath. If it’s not treated with ivermectin (a drug) the parasite causes death, and is particularly deadly in chicks.
The drugs used to treat gape are not pleasant and are hard to implement in wild populations. Problems become more apparent when parents feed their chicks soil invertebrates, such as slugs and earthworms, and it has been suggested that gape is more prevalent in areas where there is higher precipitation. However, most of the current knowledge is about the bird epidemiology rather than the parasite.
