CGL2011-24466 - Barcording cuantitativo de los ácaros de

Most animal species live as symbionts of larger plant and animal hosts. Thus, understanding hostsymbiont ecology is key to understanding how biodiviersity is sustained on Earth. Host-symbiont (mainly host-parasite) relationships have been the focus of much research from the point of view of host and symbiont ecology. However, few studies have approached host-symbiont ecology giving the same relevance to both sides of the system. Since the same symbiont species often occur in different host species to which they are more or less adapted, understanding why a particular individual host or a particular host species show a given abundance of symbionts needs an understanding of the host-symbiont community. This project proposes such an approach using the bird-feather mite system as study model. Our first aim is to translate current knowledge on the taxonomy of feather mites of European passerine birds into a barcoding dictionary, and to test its robustness to identify species. Second, using next-generation high-throughput DNA sequencing methods, our aim is to retrieve barcoding sequences from hundreds of thousands of individual feather mites to describe the relative abundance of each feather mite species living in each of 60 passerine bird species (in a total of ca. 5,000 individual birds). Also, the same approach will be used at the bird individual level (60 individuals of 30 of these passerine species, summing up 1,800 birds). Third, we will cross this information with a huge database (90,000 individual birds) on the abundance of feather mites in these 60 species that have been collected during the last 15 years by the research team of the project and other Spanish researchers. With that information, we will test which individual bird traits (e.g. body size, body condition, uropygial gland size), species behavioural (e.g. flight behaviour, social behaviour, migration, sexual behaviour), morphological (e.g. body size) and ecological traits (e.g. breeding/wintering habitat), as well as feather mite species identities and traits (e.g. degree of generalism, abundance in other bird species) are behind the huge difference on feather mite abundance among individuals within and among bird species.