1370 © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. Vector-Borne Diseases, Surveillance, Prevention Abundance of Ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) and Presence of Rickettsia and Anaplasma in Ticks Infesting Domestic Animals From Northern India Brij Ranjan Misra, 1 Niraj Kumar, 1 Rajni Kant, 1 Hirawati Deval, 1 Rajeev Singh, 1 Ashok Kumar Pandey, 1 Sthita Pragnya Behera, 1 and Vijay P. Bondre 2,3, 1 ICMR-Regional Medical Research Centre Gorakhpur, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, 2 ICMR-National Institute of Virology, Pune, Maharashtra, India, and 3 Corresponding author, e-mail: vpbondre@gmail.com Subject Editor: Kevin Macaluso Received 15 August 2020; Editorial decision 13 December 2020 Abstract Rickettsia and Anaplasma are bacteria that can be transmitted by hematophagous arthropods such as ticks infesting animals in close proximity to humans. The main objective of the present study was to investigate abundance of common tick species infesting domestic animals and presence of Rickettsia and Anaplasma in tick populations. Adult ticks were collected from domestic animals in rural areas and screened by molec- ular detection of bacterial DNA for these two genera of bacteria. A total of 1,778 adult ixodid tick specimens were collected from 200 cattle, 200 buffaloes, 200 goats, and 40 dogs. The collection consisted of four species of ixodid ticks, Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus (Canestrini) (83.8%), Hyalomma kumari (Sharif) (7.1%), Rhipicephalus sanguineus (Latreille) (6.4%), and Dermacentor auratus (Supino) (2.7%) infesting the domestic animals. The prevalence of all the collected tick species was highest in the month of October. Anaplasma spp. was the most frequently identifed bacteria (3.3%) in tested ticks. Of 17 positive tick pools for Anaplasma spp., 14 pools were from ticks infesting cattle, 2 pools of ticks collected from buffalo, and the remaining pool were ticks infesting a goat at the time of collection. Although 1.6% tick pools of R. microplus collected from cattle tested positive for Rickettsia spp., present investigation provides evidence of the most prevalent ixodid ticks infesting domestic animals and the presence of obligate intracellular bacteria, Rickettsia and Anaplasma, in these ticks collected in the Gorakhpur division of Northern India. Key words: ixodid tick, PCR, Rickettsia spp., Anaplasma spp. Ticks are considered one of the most important vectors of Gram- negative obligate intracellular alphaproteobacteria (Brites-Neto et al. 2015). Anaplasma and Rickettsia are members of this group of bacteria. Rickettsia infections are well established as a zoonosis in various parts of East Asia and India (Ghosh and Nagar 2014). Tick- borne rickettsial diseases and anaplasmosis are the major illnesses associated with managing livestock health worldwide (Jongejan and Uilenberg 2004). Ticks are the major arthropod vectors that transmit these pathogens from their animal hosts to humans and can also act as reservoirs in nature (Brites-Neto et al. 2015). Animals or humans are exposed to ticks and the pathogens that are harbored by them when they enter into well-established natural focus (biocenose) where tick-borne pathogen is naturally circulated between vertebrate host and its tick vector. This situation prevails more frequently with increasing human population and as more human activity may occur in the tick-infested habitats (Geevarghese and Mishra 2011). Usually, ticks have large host range, which facilitates the shift from one animal host to other hosts which are in abundance in its habitat. This means ticks parasitizing domestic animals in human proximity have more chances of accidental con- tact and frequent bites to humans (Léger et al. 2013). Therefore, host preference and selection can play a crucial role in spread of tick-borne bacteria. Hence, study of distribution of ticks and bac- teria harbored by them is necessary for designing of appropriate in- tervention strategies. Seroprevalence for spotted fever (36.7%) and typhus group (15.3%) of Rickettsia was detected among acute febrile illness cases during monsoon period (rainy season) from Gorakhpur, India (Mane et al. 2019). However, no entomological investigations were per- formed to understand the common tick species and circulation of Rickettsia and other related bacteria in this area. Therefore, it was prudent to study distribution of ticks infesting the domestic animals and presence of Rickettsia spp. and Anaplasma spp. in ticks from rural areas of Gorakhpur, India. Journal of Medical Entomology, 58(3), 2021, 1370–1375 doi: 10.1093/jme/tjaa296 Advance Access Publication Date: 20 January 2021 Research Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jme/article/58/3/1370/6104552 by guest on 20 October 2023