title: Bacterial 16S of Ornithodoros maritimus:negative extraction control
design: We investigated the bacterial microbiota of the soft tick Ornithodoros maritimus. Briefly, a total of 50 ticks were used (27 adults, 13 nymphs and 10 larvae) in the study. For each specimen, total acid nucleic was extracted and sent to sequencing with Illumina technology (MiSeq 2x250 bp paired-end). The bacterial composition of each tick was accessed by sequencing the V3-V4 hypervaraible region of the bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA gene (16S rRNA gene). All of the produced sequences were analysed with Mothur software.