Researchers suggest that kleptoparasitism, or food theft, among seabirds could be a transmission pathway for the H5N1 avian influenza virus, potentially explaining its rapid global spread.
About Kleptoparasitism:
The term kleptoparasitism was introduced to describe the theft of food previouslycollected or processed by some other individual.
It is a form of feeding where one animal takes prey from another that has caught, killed, or otherwise prepared, including stored food (as in the case of cuckoo bees, which lay their eggs on the pollen masses made by other bees).
Kleptoparasitism is also the 'stealing' nest material or other inanimate objects from one animal by another.
Kleptoparasitism occurs in several groups of animals, such as birds, insects, and mammals, and is considered a form of social parasitism.
The kleptoparasite benefitsfrom the efforts of other animals to obtain food, without expending energy in searching for and capturing these resources for itself.
Kleptoparasitism may be intraspecific, where the parasite is the same species as the victim, or interspecific, where the parasite is a different species.
In the latter case, the parasitesarecommonly close relativesof the organisms they parasitize ("Emery's Rule").
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