Recent studies have compared the performance of the 2 main
methodologies used to detect malaria parasites in birds, but the
comparisons were conflicting in their conclusions. For example,
Fallon and Ricklefs (2008) showed that a considerable proportion
of infection by species of both Plasmodium and Haemoproteus
remained undetected by visual screening, while PCR tests were
more sensitive to the prevalence of infections by these blood
parasites. This conclusion reinforced the findings of earlier
studies, which also indicated that the visual inspection of blood
smears tends to be less efficient for parasite detection than
molecular screening (Jarvi et al., 2002; Richard et al., 2002).
However, recently, Valki(inas et al. (2008) demonstrated that both
methods slightly underestimated prevalence, while providing
similar estimates for 3 haemosporidian genera. The latter study