A framework to evaluate the impact of ticks on human health under various scenarios of climate change is proposed. The purpose is not to provide a comprehensive plan (e.g. the economic impact of ticks on human society is not included), instead we wish to describe a series of indices that would be helpful by obtaining homogeneous comparisons of impact and vulnerability exerted by ticks in differ...

BACKGROUND Isolation of Rickettsia species from skin biopsies may be replaced by PCR. We evaluated culture sensitivity compared to PCR based on sampling delay and previous antibiotic treatment. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Skin biopsies and ticks from patients with suspected Rickettsia infection were screened for Rickettsia spp. using qPCR, and positive results were amplified and sequenced ...

In this study, we used ecological niche factor analysis (ENFA) and principal components analysis (PCA) of climate variables to define the climate niches and areas of potential colonization of six species of ticks in the Mediterranean region: Dermacentor marginatus Sulzer, Rhipicephalus bursa Canestrini & Fanzago, Rhipicephalus turanicus Pomerantsev, Matikashvili & Lototsky, Hyalomma marginatum ...

Before the eradication of Boophilus ticks from the United States, Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus (Canestrini) and Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) annulatus (Say) were important biological vectors of the cattle pathogen Anaplasma marginale Theiler. In the absence of Boophilus ticks, A. marginale continues to be transmitted by Dermacentor ticks. However, a few U.S. strains are not transmissible by...

Reexamination of Dermacentor albipictus (Packard, 1869) holdings stored in the United States National Tick Collection revealed several collections of a morphologically distinct Dermacentor species. Comparison of these specimens with other Dermacentor taxa showed that they are identical to an old taxon originally described as Dermacentor variegatus kamshadalus Neumann, 1908. For more than a cent...

sequences clustered within the Europe/ Turkey clade. The genetic distance between the 2 strains was 1.15%, but the 2 sequences were identical at the amino acid level. Sequences from the present study showed 96.4%–98.8% similarity with respective CCHFV sequences from Bulgaria from a former study (BUL10/02 and BUL1/03) (3) but differed from the Kosovo 9553/2001 strain by 0.8%–2.0% and from the Gr...

Bacterial endosymbionts with significant homology to Francisella tularensis (gamma-proteobacteria) have been described from at least five species of ticks in three different genera, including two North American Dermacentor species [D. andersoni Stiles and D. variabilis (Say)]. The evolutionary relationships among the Francisella-like endosymbionts (FLE) from different hosts and between FLE and ...