Birds in arid regions have depauperate louse communities: Climate change implications?

Environmental factors such as temperature and humidity influence the distribution of free-living organisms. As climates change, the distributions of these organisms change along with their associated parasites, mutualists and commensals. Less studied, however, is the possibility that environmental conditions may directly influence the distribution of these symbionts even if the hosts are able to persist in altered environments. Here, we investigate the diversity of parasitic lice (Insecta: Phthiraptera) on birds in arid Utah compared to the humid Bahamas. We quantified the parasite loads of 500 birds. We found that the prevalence, abundance and richness of lice was considerably lower among birds in Utah, compared to the Bahamas, despite sampling greater host taxonomic richness in Utah. Our data suggest that as climates change, birds in arid regions will have less diverse louse communities over time, potentially relieving birds of some of the cost of controlling these ectoparasites. Conv..., This dataset is a CSV file that lists the 500 individual birds (Passeriformes) that were captured in San Salvador, Bahamas or Summit County, Utah, USA. The data includes the mass of each bird and the number of lice removed from each bird via a dust-ruffling procedure described in the associated paper., , # Data from: Birds in arid regions have depauperate louse communities: Climate change implications?

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k98sf7mgn](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k98sf7mgn)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset is a csv fille that lists the 500 individual birds (Passeriformes) that were captured in San Salvador, Bahamas (2019) or in Summit County, Utah, USA (2021).  The data includes the mass of each bird and the number of lice removed from each bird via a dust-ruffling procedure described in the associated paper.

### Files and variables

#### File: Supporting\_data\_EE.csv

**Description:** 

##### Variables

* Included in the restricted data set?: \"Y\" in this column indicates that data from this individual was included in the restricted data set, which focused analyses on the seven species of birds in each location with at least 12 individuals per species.  \"N\" indicates that the individual was not included in the restricted data set  
* DATE: This i...