Abstract
Ticks of the genus Dermacentor are important vectors of human and animal pathogens in North America. They also carry a variety of endosymbiotic (i.e. non-pathogenic) bacteria. The American dog tick, D. variabilis, is known to be infected with gammaproteobacteria of the genus Arsenophonus. However, there have been no previous reports of Arsenophonus-type bacteria in the Rocky Mountain wood tick, D. andersoni, a species that is sympatric with D. variabilis in the western parts of its distributional range. In this study, the presence of Arsenophonus-type bacteria was determined by PCR and DNA sequencing for 338 D. andersoni and 448 D. variabilis adults from western Canada. Fifty-one (15%) of the D. andersoni were found to be infected with Arsenophonus, whereas only a single D. variabilis was infected. The prevalence of Arsenophonus in D. andersoni varied among localities (0–27%). The 16S rDNA sequences of Arsenophonus in Canadian D. andersoni and D. variabilis were identical to one another, but the results of a phylogenetic analysis showed that they were genetically distinct from, and may represent a different species to, the Arsenophonus in D. variabilis and Amblyomma americanum in eastern USA.
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Acknowledgments
Funding for this work was provided to NBC from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. SJD received funding through a NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship. We thank John Allen, Alvin Gajadhar, Murray Lankester, Brad Scandrett, and Travis Quirk, who provided some ticks, and Lorilee Flavelle and Andrew Gajadhar for technical assistance.
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Dergousoff, S.J., Chilton, N.B. Detection of a new Arsenophonus-type bacterium in Canadian populations of the Rocky Mountain wood tick, Dermacentor andersoni . Exp Appl Acarol 52, 85–91 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10493-010-9340-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10493-010-9340-5