Vizsgálatainkat hét különböző területen végeztük Keszthely, Gyenesdiás és Fenékpuszta térségében 2021. tavaszán őszén. Dragging módszerrel gyűjtöttük a kullancsokat, majd 70%-os etil-alkoholban tároltuk őket további vizsgálatokra. Legnagyobb egyedszámban Dermacentor reticulatus (20 pld) Ixodes ricinus (16 fordult elő egy-egy gyűjtés alkalmával. A vizsgált kullancsfajok közül D. az I. esetében e...

Mixed infections have important consequences for the ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions. In vector-borne diseases, interactions between pathogens occur in both the vertebrate host and the arthropod vector. Spirochete bacteria belonging to the Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato genospecies complex are transmitted by Ixodes ticks and cause Lyme borreliosis in humans. In Europe, ther...

Rodents comprise more species than any other mammal order. Most rodents are considered keystone species in their ecological communities, hence the survival of many other species in the ecosystem depend on them. From medical point of view, this is particularly important for rodent-dependent pathogens. In the particular case of tick-borne diseases, rodents are important as hosts for vector ticks ...

The present concept of the transmission of Lyme disease from Borrelia-infected Ixodes sp. ticks to the naïve host assumes that a low number of spirochetes that manage to penetrate the midgut epithelium migrate through the hemocoel to the salivary glands and subsequently infect the host with the aid of immunomodulatory compounds present in tick saliva. Therefore, humoral and/or cellular immune r...

To determine whether genes flow freely between populations of the Ixodes ricinus-like ticks of eastern North America, and to determine whether the abundant northerly populations of these vectors of Lyme disease and other zoonotic infections may have arisen recently from a small cohort of ancestral founders, we characterized the nuclear IR27 microsatellite alleles in ticks sampled from the geogr...

Epidemiological studies of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) conducted in the Swietokrzyskie province (south- eastern Poland) in 1996-2006 demonstrated an increase in the number of registered TBE cases in the last 6 years of the study. The highest risk of TBE virus infections occurs in the summer-autumn period (seasonality factors 96.55% and 248.28%), i.e. in periods of the highest Ixodes ricinus a...

Although the importance of rodents as reservoirs for a number of tick-borne infections is well established, comparatively little is known about the potential role of shrews, despite them occupying similar habitats. To address this, blood and tick samples were collected from common shrews (Sorex araneus) and field voles (Microtus agrestis), a known reservoir of various tick-borne infections, fro...

BACKGROUND Ticks are blood feeding arachnids that characteristically take a long blood meal. They must therefore counteract host defence mechanisms such as hemostasis, inflammation and the immune response. This is achieved by expressing batteries of salivary proteins coded by multigene families. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We report the in-depth analysis of a tick multigene family and desc...

Adult females of the genus Ixodes imbibe blood meals exceeding about 100 times their own weight within 7‒9 days. During this period, ticks internalise components of host blood by endocytic digest cells that line the tick midgut epithelium. Using RNA-seq, we aimed to characterise the midgut transcriptome composition in adult Ixodes ricinus females during early and late phase of engorgement. To a...

A total of 370 ticks, encompassing 7 species from 4 genera, were collected during 2002-2006 from domestic animals and vegetation in the Taza region of northeastern Morocco. Rickettsial DNA was identified in 101 ticks (27%) by sequencing PCR products of fragments of the citrate synthase and outer membrane protein genes of Rickettsia spp. Seven rickettsiae of the spotted fever group were identifi...