The project will involve testing blood samples from mosquitoes found high in the rainforest canopy.

Climate change and rainforest birds' vulnerability to mosquito-borne disease

CSIRO is investigating how mosquito distributions and the prevalence of avian disease in endemic bird species of the Wet Tropics might shift under climate change scenarios.

• 19 September 2007 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Avoiding heat or malaria?
• Locating the mosquitoes
• Avian malaria and pox
• Partners

Avoiding heat or malaria?

Endemic bird species of north-east Queensland’s Wet Tropics, such as the golden bowerbird and the grey-headed robin, are currently only found at higher elevations.

Until now, scientists have assumed that these birds cannot tolerate the higher temperatures of the lowlands.

It may, however, be disease − in particular, malaria − that limits the birds’ distributions.

Locating the mosquitoes

In a first for the Wet Tropics, we are investigating the distribution and biodiversity of mosquito species known to carry avian malaria and avian pox.

We are identifying the altitudes at which, and the seasons when, bird-biting mosquitoes transmit these diseases.

Our research will help us predict the threat of climate change to these bird species.

Climate partly controls the distribution of mosquitoes and malaria.

If we determine that these diseases are limiting bird species from lowland areas, then future temperature changes due to climate change may not be the primary limitation to their distribution.

Avian malaria and pox

Four of the known species of mosquito that carry avian malaria are found in Australia.

At least two of these are also carriers of avian pox.

Incidences of both diseases have been recorded in birds of the Wet Tropics.

However, in Australia, little is known of these mosquito populations and the diseases they carry, especially in the Wet Tropics.

‘The study will enable us to model how mosquito distributions might change with global warming and how the prevalence of avian disease may change along with it’, says Dr David Hilbert, who is leading the project.

‘Understanding what will affect bird distributions can help inform land managers and, possibly, inform the development of management options that could minimise the negative impacts of global warming on the unique avian biodiversity of the Wet Tropics.’

Partners

This is a sub-project of the Australian Government's Marine and Tropical Science Research Facility project, ‘Understanding the Climate Change Threat to Ecosystems and Ecosystem Processes, and Developing Options for Mitigation’.

Find out more about out work in Biodiversity & Ecology.