Abstract
Bats represent the second order of mammals with the highest number of species worldwide with over 1,616 species, and almost 10% of them are recorded in Mexico. These mammals have a great diversity of ectoparasites, in particular soft ticks of the genus Ornithodoros. Desmodus rotundus is one of the bat species that has scarcely been studied in terms of tick species richness in Mexico, with three tick species reported in five of the 32 Mexican states. For this reason, the aim of the present work was to identify ticks associated with D. rotundus from Central Mexico. Fieldwork was undertaken in the municipality El Marqués, Ejido Atongo A, Querétaro, Mexico. Bats were captured using mist nets and were visually inspected for tick presence. The ectoparasites were identified morphologically and molecularly with the use of mitochondrial markers 16SrDNA and cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI). A total of 30 D. rotundus (1 female, 29 males) were captured, from which 20 larvae identified as Ornithodoros yumatensis were recovered. Molecular analysis confirmed the presence of this species with identity values of 99–100% with sequences of this species from the southwestern US, and the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. This is the first report of ticks associated with bats for the state of Querétaro, providing the first sequences of the COI gene from Mexican populations of O. yumatensis and shows an increase in the distribution of this soft tick across Central Mexico.
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Data availability
The data that support the results of this study are available in GenBank, under the following accession numbers O. yumatensis 16S-rDNA (OP984615-OP984630) and COI (OQ048385-OQ048392).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Berenit Mendoza Garfias for preparing the scanning electron micrographs and Lucia Álvarez-Castillo for their support in editing the micrographs and generating the slide.
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The project was financed by FONDEC: FNB-2021–05.
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Fieldwork: EG, CIMC, KDVM, GAL, GAT.
Conceived and designed the experiments: EG, SSM, PCS, CALG, GAT.
Performed the experiments: EG, CIMC, SSM.
Analyzed the data: EG, CIMC, SSM, PCS, CALG, KDVM, GAL, GAT.
Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SSM, PCS, CALG, GAT.
Wrote the paper: EG, CIMC, SSM, PCS, CALG, KDVM, GAL, GAT.
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This study was approved by the Bioethics committee of the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Autonomous University of Queretaro. Bats were captured under permissions SGPA/DGVS/03444/20 and SPARN/DGVS/02164/22 from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.
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Grostieta, E., Miranda-Caballero, C.I., Sánchez-Montes, S. et al. DNA barcoding and new records of Ornithodoros yumatensis from Central Mexico. Vet Res Commun 47, 2339–2350 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11259-023-10164-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11259-023-10164-4