| avian hosts of west nile virus in arizona. | west nile virus (wnv) causes sporadic outbreaks of human encephalitis in phoenix, arizona. to identify amplifying hosts of wnv in the phoenix area, we blood-sampled resident birds and measured antibody prevalence following an outbreak in the east valley of metropolitan phoenix during summer, 2010. house sparrow (passer domesticus), house finch (haemorhous mexicanus), great-tailed grackle (quiscalus mexicanus), and mourning dove (zenaida macroura) accounted for most wnv infections among locally r ... | 2013 | 23857022 |
| reduced west nile virus transmission around communal roosts of great-tailed grackle (quiscalus mexicanus). | west nile virus has caused several outbreaks among humans in the phoenix metropolitan area (arizona, southwest usa) within the last decade. recent ecologic studies have implicated culex quinquefasciatus and culex tarsalis as the mosquito vectors and identified three abundant passerine birds-great-tailed grackle (quiscalus mexicanus), house sparrow (passer domesticus), and house finch (haemorhous mexicanus)-as key amplifiers among vertebrates. nocturnal congregations of certain species have been ... | 2014 | 25480320 |
| prevalence of blood parasites in eastern versus western house finches: are eastern birds resistant to infection? | the rapid spread of the bacterial disease, mycoplasma gallisepticum (mg), throughout the introduced range of house finches (carpodacus mexicanus) in eastern north america, compared to its slower spread through the native western range, has puzzled researchers and highlights the need to understand the relative differences in health state of finches from both populations. we conducted a light-microscope survey of hemoparasites in populations of finches from arizona (within the western range) and f ... | 2013 | 23807632 |
| house finch populations differ in early inflammatory signaling and pathogen tolerance at the peak of mycoplasma gallisepticum infection. | host individuals and populations often vary in their responses to infection, with direct consequences for pathogen spread and evolution. while considerable work has focused on the mechanisms underlying differences in resistance-the ability to kill pathogens-we know little about the mechanisms underlying tolerance-the ability to minimize fitness losses per unit pathogen. here, we examine patterns and mechanisms of tolerance between two populations of house finches (haemorhous [formerly carpodacus ... | 2013 | 23594550 |