The Sunda zebra finch (''Taeniopygia guttata'') is a species of
bird in the family
Estrildidae. It is found in the
Lesser Sundas
The Lesser Sunda Islands or nowadays known as Nusa Tenggara Islands ( id, Kepulauan Nusa Tenggara, formerly ) are an archipelago in Maritime Southeast Asia, north of Australia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west they make up ...
.
Parasites
''T. guttata'' sometimes serves as a
model organism
A model organism (often shortened to model) is a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workin ...
. Study of the immune response of ''T. guttata'' to parasites is informative for avians as a class. Its
transcriptome responses to infection have been studied by Watson ''et al.'', 2017 and Scalf ''et al.'', 2019.
[ .] ''T. guttata'' is not known to have ever been infected with any ''
Plasmodium''. Valkiūnas ''et al.'', 2018 find ''T. guttata'' seems totally
resistant to the malaria parasite that is most common among avians, ''
Plasmodium relictum
''Plasmodium relictum'' is a species in the genus '' Plasmodium,'' subgenus ''Haemamoeba''.
It is a parasite, and the most common cause of malaria in birds.
Like all ''Plasmodium'' species, ''P. relictum'' has both vertebrate and insect ...
''.
References
* Gill F, D Donsker & P Rasmussen (Eds). 2022. IOC World Bird List (v12.1). doi : 10.14344/IOC.ML.12.1
Taeniopygia
Birds described in 1817
Taxa named by Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot
{{Estrildidae-stub