A pitta with blue plumage and a black bill. It breeds in southern China and Southeast Asia and appears in Singapore during migration and winter.
It is a medium-sized pitta with a black bill and predominantly blue plumage.
A 2025 dataset describes research on three bird species living together in Vietnam. It examines mitochondrial cytochrome b, immune genes TLR3, TLR4 and MHC class I, and their relationships with malaria parasite infections. The Blue-winged Pitta is one of the species, allowing host genes and parasite lineages to be compared in the same setting.
Across the three species, the total number of MHC supertypes was not significantly related to infection status. In the Blue-winged Pitta, however, particular MHC supertypes were associated with detected Plasmodium operational taxonomic units. The record shows that host–parasite relationships can vary among bird species living in the same region.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The dataset separates patterns across three coexisting species from associations specific to the Blue-winged Pitta. In wildlife disease monitoring, recording host species, immune genes and parasite types together can provide a basis for comparing ecological differences within a region.