Bacteria associated with Amblyomma cajennense tick eggs

Abstract

Ticks represent a large group of pathogen vectors that blood feed on a diversity of hosts. In the Americas, the Ixodidae ticks Amblyomma cajennense are responsible for severe impact on livestock and public health. In the present work, we present the isolation and molecular identification of a group of culturable bacteria associated with A. cajennense eggs from females sampled in distinct geographical sites in southeastern Brazil. Additional comparative analysis of the culturable bacteria from Anocentor nitens, Rhipicephalus sanguineus and Ixodes scapularis tick eggs were also performed. 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses identified 17 different bacterial types identified as Serratia marcescens, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Enterobacter spp., Micrococcus luteus, Ochrobactrum anthropi, Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus spp., distributed in 12 phylogroups. Staphylococcus spp., especially S. sciuri, was the most prevalent bacteria associated with A. cajennense eggs, occurring in 65% of the samples and also frequently observed infecting A. nitens eggs. S. maltophilia, S. marcescens and B. cereus occurred infecting eggs derived from specific sampling sites, but in all cases rising almost as pure cultures from infected A. cajennense eggs. The potential role of these bacterial associations is discussed and they possibly represent new targets for biological control strategies of ticks and tick borne diseases.

Tick saliva microbiomes isolated from engorged and partially fed adults of Haemaphysalis flava tick females

“…Some microbial genera detected in this study have previously been isolated from the midgut content of H. flava , including Rickettsia, Coxiella and Staphylococcus (He et al., ; Yang, Liu, & Cheng, ). Many other genera have also been found in other tick species, such as Corynebacterium, Microbacterium and Comamonas in Rhipicephalus microplus (Andreotti et al., ; Zimmer et al., ); Propionibacterium in Ixodes ricinus, Dermacentor reticulatus and Haemaphysalis concinna (Egyed & Makrai, ) ; Acinetobacter in Dermacentor andersoni (Clayton, Gall, Mason, Scoles, & Brayton, ), Ixodes persulcatus, Ixodes pavlovskyi and D. reticulatus (Kurilshikov et al., ); Stenotrophomonas and Micrococcus in Amblyomma cajennense (Machado‐Ferreira, Vizzoni, Piesman, Gazeta, & Soares, ), I. persulcatus (Isogai et al., ), Hyalomma dromedarii (Montasser, ) and I. ricinus (Stojek & Dutkiewicz, ); Methylobacterium in I. ricinus (Klubal et al., ); and finally Oscillospira, Agrobacterium, SMB53, Dermacoccus, Sutterella and Providencia in R. microplus (Xiang et al., ). This suggests that these bacteria are all common to the Ixodidae family.…”

Microbiome Composition and Borrelia Detection in Ixodes scapularis Ticks at the Northwestern Edge of Their Range

“…The assembly of such a microbial community can be affected by the immune responses of a tick to previously acquired microbes [ 8 ] and host-associated responses to tick salivary proteins [ 9 ]. The impacts of these bacteria on ticks are varied and can include positive effects such as increased reproductive output [ 4 , 10 ], overwintering success [ 11 , 12 ], or egg survival [ 13 ]. Although nutritional endosymbionts are the most abundant bacteria found in ticks, soil-associated bacteria are usually the most diverse [ 14 , 15 ], and even minor microbiome members can be critical during off-host periods in the lifecycle of ticks [ 16 ].…”

Amblyomma sculptum Salivary Protease Inhibitors as Potential Anti-Tick Vaccines

“…Machado-Ferreira et al. ( 67 ) evaluated the bacteria present in the eggs of A. sculptum and showed that the microbiota can act as a chemical defense and would be beneficial for its development in the environment.…”