By utilising data from an existing study, David Douglas and James Pearce-Higgins have discovered that Golden Plover chicks that carry more sheep-ticks Ixodes ricinus have a lower chance of survival. Their findings are written up as a paper in Bird Study. The work is only based on a small sample and the data don’t identify the mechanism that leads to increased mortality but, given the current interest in the biological effects of ticks, the findings are interesting.

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