New records of ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) infesting wild birds in a forest fragment in Acre, Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

This study aimed to expand knowledge about tick parasitism on wild birds in western Amazonia and provide additional records of species parasitized by ticks in the state of Acre. Birds were captured with mist nets from September 2016 to February 2017 at the Fazenda Experimental Catuaba, in Senador Guiomard, Acre State, Brazil, identified, and thoroughly inspected. Detected ticks were removed with tweezers, stored in labeled collectors containing 70% alcohol, and identified using a stereomicroscope with incident lighting and taxonomic keys at the Department of Preventive Veterinary Medicine and Animal Health of the School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science of the University of São Paulo. In total, 203 wild birds were captured, comprising nine orders and 24 families. Among them, 24 birds (11.82%) belonging to 13 species were parasitized by 44 ticks at different stages: 26 Amblyomma sp. larvae, 10 Amblyomma nodosum nymphs, four Amblyomma longirostre nymphs, and four Amblyomma humerale nymphs. This study reports for the first time nine new species of birds as hosts of ticks of the genus Amblyomma in the state of Acre, namely: Monasa nigrifrons, Hypocnemis subflava, Dendrocincla fuliginosa, Sittasomus griseicapillus, Xiphorhynchus guttatoides, Poecilotriccus latirostris, Hemitriccus flammulatus, Ramphotrigon megacephalum, and Turdus amaurochalinus. This study also records, for the first time, A. nodosum ticks parasitizing R. megacephalum and A. humerale parasitizing Momotus momota, S. griseicapillus, and X. guttatoides.

Ticks from the Brazilian Amazon: Species, Distribution and Host-Relations

“…The Dendrocolaptidae family was the second with five (Figure 2 and Table 2). Overall, A. longirostre and A. nodosum are the two most common species on wild birds in the Brazilian Amazon [68][69][70][71] (Figure 4 and Table 2). The tick A. longirostre was the most common, recorded in 12 families and 40 species of birds (36 Passerines and 4 non-Passerines) ( Figure 2).…”

Parasitism by Amblyomma humerale (Acari: Ixodidae) on Chelonoidis denticulatus (Testudines: Testudinidae) in the Atlantic Forest

“…Other reports have described parasitism of adult A. humerale on the toad Rhinella arenarum (Hensel, 1867) (previously Bufo arenarum -Anura, Bufonidae; Sinkoc & Brum, 1997) and, under laboratory conditions, on Trachemys scripta (Wied-Neuwied, 1839) (red-eared slider -Testudines, Emydidae; Martins et al, 2020). Immature stages of the parasite have already been found on caimans, lizards and snakes (Labruna et al, 2002a;Martins et al, 2020), wild mammals (Witter et al, 2016;Fuverki et al, 2021) and birds (Ogrzewalska et al, 2010;Souza et al, 2020). Although reports on the usual hosts of A. humerale in the different biomes in which it occurs have been produced, details of parasitism patterns exhibited by this species have been described only for the state of Rondônia, in the Amazon region (Labruna et al, 2002a), and in the central-western portion of Mato Grosso state, in the Cerrado-Amazonia transition (Morais et al, 2017).…”