An ecological and epidemiological single‐season survey of Anaplasma and Ehrlichia positive ticks in Victoria Falls National Park, Zimbabwe

Abstract

There is an urgent need for continued research on the ecology of tick‐borne diseases in Africa. Our objective was to provide a preliminary description of the ecology and epidemiology of tick species, tick‐borne pathogens, and animal hosts in Zimbabwe, focusing efforts at Victoria Falls National Park, for a single season. We tested the hypothesis that tick surveillance and pathogen screening data can be used to model associations among ticks, hosts, and pathogens. We collected ticks from domesticated animals and wildlife in Zimbabwe and screened the ticks for the presence of Anaplasma and Ehrlichia bacteria. Nearly 30% of the screened ticks were PCR‐positive; 89% of tick species were PCR‐positive, and 88% of animal species carried at least one PCR‐positive tick. We sequenced a subset of amplicons that were similar to three Anaplasma species and three Ehrlichia species. The odds of a tick being PCR‐positive increased when many ticks were collected from the host or the tick was collected from a cow (domesticated animal). Tick species shared host species more often than expected. We demonstrate that ticks in northwestern Zimbabwe present a One Health problem for nearby wildlife and humans.

A simple, effective and inexpensive method to isolate the nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) from a single tick for molecular detection of various pathogens

“…There are research works, where no mechanical crushing is used to isolate the ticks, but ticks were cut with scalpels in two halves. One part is stored in 80% ethanol and other half was used for isolation and subsequently used molecular detection of Anaplasma and Ehrlichia gena [17].…”

Relationship Between the Spectrometric Values of Dna, Rna, and the PCR Presence of a Pathogen in Single Tick Samples

“…It makes possible to detect them in ticks. There are many publications about the detection of pathogens in ticks, but many research groups are using different methods to isolate nucleic acid from ticks, most commonly the pooled tick samples [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”