Feather mites (Astigmata) avoid moulting wing feathers of passerine birds

摘要

The moult of birds could greatly perturb the life cycle of feather mites (Astigmata). These mites live on the surface of feathers and are unlikely to survive if they are on one when it is moulted. Therefore, we hypothesized that they would escape to other feathers to avoid this risk of mortality. We analysed the distribution of feather mites on the wings of 63 moulting individuals of 13 species of passerine birds. We used generalized liner mixed models to test whether the distribution of feather mites depends on the stage of moult of feathers.