1. Mitochondrial sequences of Rhipicephalus and Coxiella endosymbiont reveal evidence of lineages co-cladogenesis
- Author
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Manoj Fonville, Maria João Coimbra-Dores, Ana Cristina Oliveira, Mariana Maia-Silva, Sónia Afonso, Ryanne I. Jaarsma, Deodália Dias, María Casero, Fernanda Rosa, Hein Sprong, Daniela Filipa Ferreira da Costa, Fábia Azevedo, Anderson Oliveira Carmo, and Ricardo Manuel Lemos Brandão
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Genetic Speciation ,030231 tropical medicine ,Rhipicephalus sanguineus ,Tick ,Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology ,Microbiology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Coxiella ,Dogs ,0302 clinical medicine ,Phylogenetics ,parasitic diseases ,Rhipicephalus ,medicine ,Animals ,Dog Diseases ,Rickettsia ,Phylogeny ,Rickettsia massiliae ,Tick-borne disease ,Ecology ,biology ,Phylogenetic tree ,fungi ,biology.organism_classification ,medicine.disease ,030104 developmental biology ,Cladogenesis ,Evolutionary biology ,Babesia ,Rickettsia conorii - Abstract
Rhipicephalus ticks are competent vectors of several pathogens, such as Spotted Fever Group Rickettsiae (SFGR) and many Babesia species. Within this genus, different R. sanguineus s.l. lineages show an unequal vector competence and resistance regarding some pathogenic strains. Current literature supports that tick endosymbionts may play an essential role in the transmission ability of a vector. Indeed, the microbial community of Rhipicephalus seems to be dominated by Coxiella-like endosymbionts (CLE). Still, their co-evolutionary associations with the complicated phylogeny of Rhipicephalus lineages and their transmissible pathogens remain unclear. We performed a phylogenetic congruence analysis to address whether divergent R. sanguineus s.l. lineages had a different symbiont composition. For that, we applied a PCR based approach to screen part of the microbial community present in 279 Rhipicephalus ticks from the Iberian Peninsula and Africa. Our analyses detected several qPCR-positive signals for both SFGR and Babesia species, of which we suggest R. sanguineus-tropical lineage as a natural vector of Babesia vogeli and R. sanguineus-temperate lineage of SFGR. The acquisition of 190 CLE sequences allowed to evaluate co-phylogenetic associations between the tick and the symbiont. With this data, we observed a strong but incomplete co-cladogenesis between CLE strains and their Rhipicephalus tick lineages hosts.
- Published
- 2020
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