Authors

Discussion

Only a few surveys that deal with heron’s helminth diversity in Ukraine exists. None of these studies focused on helminth communities. Our research is the first where statistical methods are used for comparing the helminth communities from this geographical area. Our investigation is based on three heron species from Ukraine: Ardea cinerea (47 specimens), Ardea purpurea (33 specimens), and Nycticorax nycticorax (48 specimens). The analysis indicates a high level of similarity of helminth infra-communities across the three bird species. However, the infra-communities of every bird species show some unique features. We assume that the differences can be explained by the different availability of both freshwater and saltwater intermediate hosts for the birds in different Ukraine regions.