Birds are hosts for several zoonotic pathogens. Because of their high mobility, especially of longdistance migrants, birds can disperse these pathogens, affecting their distribution and phylogeography. We focused on Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, which includes the causative agents of Lyme borreliosis, as an example for tick-borne pathogens, to address the role of birds as propagation hosts of zoonotic agents at a large geographical scale. We collected ticks from passerine birds in 11 European countries. B. burgdorferi s.l. prevalence in Ixodes spp. was 37% and increased with latitude. The fieldfare Turdus pilaris and the blackbird T. merula carried ticks with the highest Borrelia prevalence (92 and 58%, respectively), whereas robin Erithacus rubecula ticks were the least infected (3.8%). Borrelia garinii was the most prevalent genospecies (61%), followed by B. valaisiana (24%), B. afzelii (9%), B. turdi (5%) and B. lusitaniae (0.5%). A novel Borrelia genospecies "Candidatus Borrelia aligera" was also detected. Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis of B. garinii isolates together with the global collection of B. garinii genotypes obtained from the Borrelia MLST public database revealed that: (a) there was little overlap among genotypes from different continents, (b) there was no geographical structuring within Europe, and (c) there was no evident association pattern detectable among B. garinii genotypes from ticks feeding on birds, questing ticks or human isolates. These findings strengthen the hypothesis that the population structure and evolutionary biology of tick-borne pathogens are shaped by their host associations and the movement patterns of these hosts.

• MeSH
• Borrelia genetika   MeSH
• klíště mikrobiologie   MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• lymeská nemoc mikrobiologie   MeSH
• multilokusová sekvenční typizace metody   MeSH
• nemoci ptáků mikrobiologie   MeSH
• zpěvní ptáci mikrobiologie   MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Evropa MeSH

Phylogeographical studies are common in boreal and temperate species from the Palaearctic, but scarce in arid-adapted species. We used nuclear and mitochondrial markers to investigate phylogeography and to estimate chronology of colonization events of the trumpeter finch Bucanetes githagineus, an arid-adapted bird. We used 271 samples from 16 populations, most of which were fresh samples but including some museum specimens. Microsatellite data showed no clear grouping according to the sampling locations. Microsatellite and mitochondrial data showed the clearest differentiation between Maghreb and Canary Islands and between Maghreb and Western Sahara. Mitochondrial data suggest differentiation between different Maghreb populations and among Maghreb and Near East populations, between Iberian Peninsula and Canary Islands, as well as between Western Sahara and Maghreb. Our coalescence analyses indicate that the trumpeter finch colonized North Africa during the humid Marine Isotope Stage 5 (MIS5) period of the Sahara region 125 000 years ago. We constructed an ecological niche model (ENM) to estimate the geographical distribution of climatically suitable habitats for the trumpeter finch. We tested whether changes in the species range in relation to glacial-interglacial cycles could be responsible for observed patterns of genetic diversity and structure. Modelling results matched with those from genetic data as the species' potential range increases in interglacial scenarios (in the present climatic scenario and during MIS5) and decreases in glacial climates (during the last glacial maximum, LGM, 21 000 years ago). Our results suggest that the trumpeter finch responded to Pleistocene climatic changes by expanding and contracting its range.

• MeSH
• biologické modely MeSH
• ekosystém * MeSH
• fylogeografie MeSH
• genetická variace MeSH
• klimatické změny MeSH
• mikrosatelitní repetice MeSH
• mitochondriální DNA genetika   MeSH
• molekulární sekvence - údaje MeSH
• pěnkavovití klasifikace   MeSH
• populační genetika MeSH
• sekvenční analýza DNA MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Check Tag
• zvířata MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Afrika MeSH
• severní Afrika MeSH
• Španělsko MeSH
• Střední východ MeSH

Citizen science projects store an enormous amount of information about species distribution, diversity and characteristics. Researchers are now beginning to make use of this rich collection of data. However, access to these databases is not always straightforward. Apart from the largest and international projects, citizen science repositories often lack specific Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to connect them to the scientific environments. Thus, it is necessary to develop simple routines to allow researchers to take advantage of the information collected by smaller citizen science projects, for instance, programming specific packages to connect them to popular scientific environments (like R). Here, we present rAvis, an R-package to connect R-users with Proyecto AVIS (http://proyectoavis.com), a Spanish citizen science project with more than 82,000 bird observation records. We develop several functions to explore the database, to plot the geographic distribution of the species occurrences, and to generate personal queries to the database about species occurrences (number of individuals, distribution, etc.) and birdwatcher observations (number of species recorded by each collaborator, UTMs visited, etc.). This new R-package will allow scientists to access this database and to exploit the information generated by Spanish birdwatchers over the last 40 years.

• MeSH
• biodiverzita MeSH
• časové faktory MeSH
• databáze faktografické * MeSH
• dobrovolní pracovníci MeSH
• ekologie metody   MeSH
• internet MeSH
• populační dynamika MeSH
• programovací jazyk MeSH
• ptáci * MeSH
• software * MeSH
• výpočetní biologie metody   MeSH
• výzkumný projekt MeSH
• zeměpis MeSH
• zvířata MeSH
• Check Tag
• zvířata MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Španělsko MeSH