"Self-fumigation is important because there currently are no other methods to control this parasite," says University of Utah biology doctoral student Sarah Knutie, the study's first author.
Senior author and biology professor Dale Clayton says the parasitic nest fly may have invaded Ecuador's Galapagos Islands via ships and boats from the mainland at an unknown time and "showed up in large numbers in the 1990s. So the birds have no history with these flies, which is why they are sitting ducks. From the perspective of the birds, these things are from Mars."
The findings were published online May 5, 2014, in the journal Current Biology.
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