Timing and number of colonizations but not diversification rates affect diversity patterns in hemosporidian lineages on a remote oceanic archipelago

Parasite diversity on remote oceanic archipelagos is determined by the number and timing of colonizations, and in-situ diversification rate. In this study we compare intra-archipelago diversity of two hemosporidian parasite genera, Plasmodium and Leucocytozoon, infecting birds of the Mascarene archipelago. Despite the generally higher vagility of Plasmodium parasites, we report a much lower diversity of Plasmodium cytochrome-b haplotypes in the archipelago compared to Leucocytozoon.