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| Martin Marinov, PhD |
I joined Avian
Blood Parasites Research Group in 2011 when I started my PhD. My main area of
research interest is behavioural ecology. I am especially interested in two
topics with rapid upsurge during the last 20 years: host-parasite interactions
and animal personalities. Together with my colleagues, I use passerine birds
and haemosporidian parasites as a model system in order to test hypotheses
about the possible interactions between both phenomena. Similarly to the
morphological and physiological traits, animal behaviour varies considerably
between individuals of the same population. This variation can be manipulated
by parasites in two possible ways. Firstly, parasites can infect easily those
individuals who expose themselves more readily to vectors. Secondly, parasites
have the potential to alter directly host behaviour and thus may contribute to
variation in long-term scale. These interactions may have important
consequences on bird populations, with implication for their fitness and
survival, and can reveal the mechanism underlying the host-parasite
co-evolution.
