Emerging infectious diseases are one of the greatest challenges of our times, with detrimental effects across scales of biological organization. Avian malaria (AM), a vector-borne disease caused by haemosporidian parasites (e.g. Plasmodium and Haemoproteus) – is an important emerging disease in bird populations globally. Large-scale mortalities have occurred in island bird communities (e.g. Hawaii and New Zealand), where AM has been recently introduced. Here, we elucidate host ecological traits that influence AM infection risk among host communities inhabiting the Sky Islands of the Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot. We sampled 1177 birds (28 species) and amplified parasite mitochondrial cytochrome b gene (480bp) to identify AM parasites. We examined seven species-specific and four individual level ecological predictors using Bayesian phylogenetic mixed effect models and tested the effect of host phylogeny on variation in AM risk by estimating phylogenetic signal. We found 24 species infected with AM parasites (41.6% prevalence). Host ecological traits promoting parasite exposure (e.g., sociality, foraging strata and elevation) and traits affecting host susceptibility (e.g., sexual dimorphism, individual body condition and host phylogeny) influenced variation in AM risk but the relative importance of these effects varied for Plasmodium and Haemoproteus. Identifying eco-evolutionary factors affecting disease dynamics are crucial for understanding disease transmission, predicting disease risk and biological conservation.