Habitat fragmentation, not habitat loss, drives the prevalence of blood parasites in a Caribbean passerine

Habitat destruction due to human land-use activities is well recognized as a central threat to biodiversity. However, there is still debate about the relative influence of its two components, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation, mostly because few studies have been able to disentangle their respective effects. We studied mechanisms by which habitat destruction might influence the prevalence of vector-transmitted haemosporidian blood parasites of the genera Plasmodium and Haemoproteus the Lesser Antillean Bullfinch, Loxigilla noctis, on the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique . Starting from a large set of environmental descriptors (including metrics reflecting habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and landscape heterogeneity; as well as other variables not linked to habitat destruction, such as climatic conditions), we used PLS regression analyses to determine which variables were driving parasite prevalence on the islands. Our results showed that variables related to forest...