When Angela Theodosopoulos began studying Colorado's Mountain and Black-capped Chickadees four years ago, her original goal was to research hybridization among the species and the various parasites they each co-evolved with. But when the PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder began analyzing the birds' blood, she made a worrisome discovery: Some of the chickadees were infected with a strain of introduced avian malaria. According to a report published this month in Biology Letters, Theodosopoulos' finding is the first record of this particular strain in a non-migratory bird species in North America. The parasite was found in two Mountain Chickadees and a single Black-capped Chickadee, but the low number of infections makes Theodosopoulos, lead author of the paper, believe that another avian species might be the main host. While the strain has the potential to be damaging to bird populations, Theodosopoulos stresses that more research is...