Natural Anaplasmataceae infection in Rhipicephalus bursa ticks collected ă from sheep in the French Basque Country

Mustapha Dahmani , Bernard Davoust (1) , Frederic Rousseau , Didier Raoult (1, 2) , Florence Fenollar (1) , Oleg Mediannikov (1)

1 URMITE - Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes
2 IHU Marseille - Institut Hospitalier Universitaire Méditerranée Infection

Rhipicephalus bursa is one of 79 species of the genus Rhipicephalus in ă the family of Ixodidae. In this study, we investigated Anaplasmataceae ă bacteria associated with R. bursa collected after an epizootic outbreak ă of ovine anaplasmosis. 76 adult ticks, (60 male and 16 female ticks), ă were removed from sheep in two farms and all identified as R. bursa, all ă females were partially engorged. We found that 50% of the ticks were ă positive in the initial Anaplasmataceae qPCR screening. Bacterial ă species was identified by analyzing the sequences of amplicons of 23S ă rRNA, groEL and rpoB genes. 22.4% of ticks contained DNA of Anaplasma ă phagocytophilum and 7.9% the DNA of Anaplasma ovis. Based on 23S rRNA ă and groEL genes analysis, we found that 19.7% of ticks contained a ă potentially new species of Ehrlichia. We propose the status of ă Candidatus for this uncultured species and we provisionally name it ă Candidatus Ehrlichia urmitei. No Wolbachia were identified. These ă results show that R. bursa can be a carrier of Anaplasmataceae bacteria. ă (C) 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Domaines: Maladies infectieuses

Mustapha Dahmani, Bernard Davoust, Frederic Rousseau, Didier Raoult, Florence Fenollar, et al.. Natural Anaplasmataceae infection in Rhipicephalus bursa ticks collected ă from sheep in the French Basque Country. Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases, 2017, 8 (1), pp.18-24. ⟨10.1016/j.ttbdis.2016.09.009⟩. ⟨hal-01474862⟩