Pectoral Sandpipers provided Erika with the data for her dissertation. She studied their trematode parasites as the birds made their 15,000 km migration from the Arctic to Argentina. She took parasite samples in Canada, South Dakota, Louisiana, and Peru. She discovered that the the more internal parasite species, those not restricted to the digestive tract, were most likely to be found across the birds' whole migration. Intestinal species were lost, those lodged in the birds’ air sacs were not dislodged. Such a long migration must be physiologically stressful for the birds. Pectoral Sandpipers that breed in Siberia may winter in southeast Asia and in the South Pacific. Other Siberian birds may make a “Great Circle route over the Arctic Ocean to Alaska or Canada and then to South American wintering areas (Farner et al. 2013). Erika and I found this Pectoral Sandpiper on 31 October 2019 in the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.
Erika - I find this blog/info re Air Sac contamination longevity to be gratifying because I found this to be
ReplyDeletea likely scenario of the domestic turkeys I raised in my
career also. It is no wonder that the respiratory issues with birds are more impaired because of air sacs vs only lungs.
Thanks for this.