Ticks and tick-borne diseases from Mallorca Island, Spain.

Abstract

Ixodid ticks are obligate blood-feeding arthropods and important vectors of pathogens. In Mallorca, almost no data on the tick fauna are available. Herein, we investigated ticks and tick-borne pathogens in ticks collected from dogs, a cat and humans in Mallorca as result of a citizen science project. A total of 91 ticks were received from German tourists and residents in Mallorca. Ticks were collected from March to October 2023 from dogs, cat and humans, morphologically and genetically identified and tested for pathogens by PCRs. Six tick species could be identified:(= 2),(= 1),(= 7),(= 1),s.l. (= 71) and(= 9).s.l. adults were collected from dogs and four females from a cat and the 16S rDNA sequences identified it ass.s.was collected from 1 human, 1 dog and 5 specimens were collected from the ground in the community of Santanyi, together with onemale. This is the first report ofin Mallorca. Bothwere collected from humans andfemale was collected from a dog. All ticks tested negative for,spp.,spp., and piroplasms. In 32/71 (45%) specimens ofs.s.,spp. could be detected and in 18/32 (56.2%) sequenced tick DNAswas identified.female and bothtested positive in the screening PCR, but the sequencing for the identification of thesp. failed.