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| Dimitar Dimitrov, PhD |
As a Master student at the University of Shumen I was interested in bird
migration and I did my thesis on the migration of soaring birds. In 2006 my interest in
birds, brought me at the biological station ‘Kalimok’ where I met most of
my recent colleagues from the Avian Blood Parasites Research
Group. During the field work at the station I did my first steps in catching
and ringing passerine birds, but the most exciting for me
was to collect blood samples from the birds and to examine them for malaria and
other haemosporidian infections (Haemosporida) using microscope. The head of
the biological station Dr Pavel Zehtindjiev and his PhD student at that time,
Mihaela Ilieva had ongoing project for studying haemosporidian parasites in
great reed warblers together with colleagues from Lund University, Sweden and
Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. A year later, encouraged by Pavel I started my
PhD on avian blood parasites. I studied genetic diversity based on
mitochondrial cytochromeb (cytb) gene of the parasites, host specificity and abundance of natural infections
in different bird species and attempted to link some of the parasite species
identified using microscope with their cyt b lineages. These protozoa
organisms are fascinating objects for studying parasite-host interaction and
co-evolution, because of their popularity (malaria is still big burden for
mankind in tropical regions), great diversity (over 1000 species), easy sampling,
worldwide distribution and huge pathogenic potential, which might affect birds’
physiology, fitness and behaviour in different ways.
