Tick-borne pathogens in dogs, wild small mammals and their ectoparasites in the semi-arid Caatinga biome, northeastern Brazil

Occurrence of tick-borne pathogens in dogs in a coastal region of the state of Ceará, northeastern Brazil

“…Considering the exposure to R. amblyommatis among the dogs studied here, it can be suggested that ticks of the genus Amblyomma were present in Vila de Jericoacoara. Furthermore, C. felis felis fleas were previously found to be infected with R. felis in Ceará (Oliveira et al, 2020). However, the dogs tested in the present study did not show titers that would correspond to exposure to the species R. felis, although C. felis felis fleas were found on three animals.…”

“…Although these pathogens had previously been reported infecting dogs in other states in Brazil (Saito et al, 2008;Ramos et al, 2010;Spolidorio et al, 2011;Vieira et al, 2011;Costa et al, 2015; Tick-borne pathogens in dogs in Ceará, Brazil Miranda et al, 2014;Rotondano et al, 2015Rotondano et al, , 2017Lopes et al, 2019;Oliveira et al, 2020), data relating to Ceará were very scarce, and were mainly from the coastal region. Recently, R. rickettsii, R. amblyommatis and E. canis were reported infecting dogs in the National Forest (FLONA) of Araripe-Apodi, in the municipality of Crato, state of Ceará (Oliveira et al, 2020). However, there had not been any previous reports of H. canis and B. vogeli in dogs in this state.…”

“…According to these authors, environmental factors such as the semiarid climate and the typical xeric forest of the Caatinga biome may have had an association with the absence of tick vectors of the genus Amblyomma in the study region. On the other hand, Oliveira et al (2020) proved that dogs in the FLONA of Araripe-Apodi were infested with R. sanguineus s.l., Amblyomma parvum and C. felis felis; and that specimens of A. parvum and C. felis felis were infected with Rickettsia spp. Parasitism by other tick species in dogs in Vila de Jericoacoara should not be ruled out, given the presence of anti-R. amblyommatis antibodies in the animals studied.…”

“…Rickettsia amblyommatis has been reported infecting Amblyomma auricularium, A. parvum (Saraiva et al, 2013;Lugarini et al, 2015;Oliveira et al, 2020), Amblyomma longirostre (Ogrzewalska et al, 2011;Lugarini et al, 2015;McIntosh et al, 2015), Amblyomma cajennense sensu stricto (ss) (Costa et al, 2017), Amblyomma pseudoconcolor (Silva et al, 2018) and Amblyomma varium (Lugarini et al, 2015) in northeastern Brazil. Although the pathogenicity of R. amblyommatis to humans has not yet been proven, some cases of Rocky Mountain spotted fever in the United States may have been caused by this bacterium (Apperson et al, 2008).…”

Diversity, distribution and changes in communities of fleas on small mammals along the elevational gradient from the Pannonian Plain to the Carpathian Mountains

“…Rosicky, 1957; Dudich, 1989, 1992, 1995). On the other hand, possible losses of fleas from dead host individuals [in comparison with amount of fleas collected from live animals (Krasnov et al ., 1998; de Oliveira et al ., 2020 a.o.)] are compensated by a large amount of evaluated material (see below).…”