What Corvus Splendens Offers As a Host: Tolerance or Controlled Aggression?

A study was conducted to investigate the parasitic diversity prevailing in the natural population of common crow, Corvus splendens from an urban habitat of Kolkata, India. A population of twenty birds were examined for ectoparasites, endoparasites, essential blood parameters and selected histopathological study. The blood samples from two male and two female birds were found to be infected with Plasmodium sp. and the histopathology of the liver of the infected birds exhibited signs of inflammation. Six species of chewing lice were identified from the feathers of the birds. Deformities and developmental anomalies in a significantly large number of the examined lice population were observed. The birds infected with Plasmodium sp. expressed no notable sign of being diseased with respect to the uninfected birds and observed blood parameters like haemoglobin content, total count of red blood corpuscles, serum calcium, magnesium, albumin and glucose did not differ significantly across sexes. The presence of deformed lice in the feathers of the birds probably indicates the host’s unique defence strategy against the ectoparasites although the observation demands further study. As a whole, C. splendens thus emerges as a challenging model for exploration of the host-parasite dynamics.