title: Detection of a new Arsenophonus-type bacterium in Canadian populations of the Rocky Mountain wood tick, Dermacentor andersoni.
abstract: Ticks of the genus Dermacentor are important vectors of human and animal pathogens in North America. They also carry a variety of endosymbiotic (i.e. non-pathogenic) bacteria. The American dog tick, D. variabilis, is known to be infected with gammaproteobacteria of the genus Arsenophonus. However, there have been no previous reports of Arsenophonus-type bacteria in the Rocky Mountain wood tick, D. andersoni, a species that is sympatric with D. variabilis in the western parts of its distributional range. In this study, the presence of Arsenophonus-type bacteria was determined by PCR and DNA sequencing for 338 D. andersoni and 448 D. variabilis adults from western Canada. Fifty-one (15%) of the D. andersoni were found to be infected with Arsenophonus, whereas only a single D. variabilis was infected. The prevalence of Arsenophonus in D. andersoni varied among localities (0-27%). The 16S rDNA sequences of Arsenophonus in Canadian D. andersoni and D. variabilis were identical to one another, but the results of a phylogenetic analysis showed that they were genetically distinct from, and may represent a different species to, the Arsenophonus in D. variabilis and Amblyomma americanum in eastern USA.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Saskatchewan, 112 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. shaun.dergousoff@usask.ca
authors.forename: Shaun J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Dergousoff
authors.forename: Neil B
authors.initials: NB
authors.lastname: Chilton
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002170:Canada; D003870:Dermacentor / Q000382:microbiology*; D004755:Enterobacteriaceae / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S / Q000235:genetics; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D012336:RNA, Ribosomal, 16S