Parasitic flukes have highly complex life cycles circumscribing a definitive host’s ecology. Parasites in wildlife are underappreciated, poorly recorded, and many species are endangered. Sitko and Heneberg collate reports of long-term changes in fluke communities found in euthanized injured birds over the past 50 years in the Czech Republic. In all, 33 species of fluke were identified and most were species specific. Over the decades, trematode abundance declined and assemblages simplified; for example, since 1980, lapwing specimens have been found to be free of flukes. The authors attribute the parasite declines not solely to a loss of host abundance but also to changing agricultural practices, landscape simplification, and the broad use of agricultural chemicals such as azole fungicides, a chemical family also used as anthelmintics. This is bad news for the flukes but might not be all bad in the short term for the breeding success of the birds.
Parasites Vectors 14, 383 (2021).
