2025/01/01 by Leshon Lee, Jozef Oboňa, Yu Xuan Lee +8 · 1 voice · 3 citations
Immunology and Microbiology · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Bird parasitology and diseases #Bartonella species infections research #Animal Behavior and Reproduction
paper · pdf · doi:10.1155/jzs/8819646
Biodiversity science depends on rigorous characterization of species diversity and ecological roles, yet the ecology of many invertebrate species remains virtually unknown. One pragmatic way to change this is to make use of deceased animals and their companions, such as by salvaging and examining carcasses reported by citizen scientists. Here, we demonstrate how bird carcasses reported by citizen scientists can help generate functional biodiversity data on parasites. We reveal 44 hippoboscid flies (Diptera: Hippoboscidae) found on 36 of 148 salvaged bird carcasses (~24% success rate). Using the principles of large‐scale integrative taxonomy (LIT), we first delimited 10 hippoboscid species. One of these, Pseudolynchia maai Lee & Oboňa, sp. nov., was new to science and is here formally described. We also provide a pictorial key, image‐based diagnostics, and molecular diagnostics for all 10 species. We report 25 species interactions between flies and birds. This study illustrates how combining the efforts of citizen scientists and biologists can support species discovery and generate functional parasite–host data.