Figure 1.
Administrative regions of Belarus showing the 32 collection sites and the total pathogen prevalence in ticks collected from each region.
Table 1.
Primers and PCR conditions used for the detection of the eight different pathogen groups.
Table 2.
Numbers of questing and feeding ticks collected in different regions of Belarus.
Table 3.
Pathogen prevalence in questing and feeding ticks.
Figure 2.
Phylogenetic trees for speciation of pathogens in Belarus.
Neighbour-Joining trees based on (A) a 344 nt fragment of the 17-kDa gene of Rickettsia species (nt 1194706 –1195039 of CP000766.2), (B) a 395 nt fragment of the ompA gene of Rickettsia species (nt 71 –465 of JN400406.1), (C) a 348 nt fragment of the FlaB gene of Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. (nt 97–444 of HM345909.1), (D) a 352 nt fragment of the groEL gene of Anaplasma species (nt 732–1083 of HQ629903.1), (E) a 319 nt fragment of the htpB gene of Coxiella burnetii (nt 320–638 of EU888863.1), (F) a 894 nt fragment of the 16S rRNA gene of Francisella species (nt 8–898 of HM371361.1), (G) a 515 nt fragment of the 18S rRNA gene of Babesia species (nt 2–516 of GQ856653.1) and (H) a 320 nt fragment of the groEL gene of Bartonella species (nt 14–333 of GU827129.1). Sequences from Belarus are indicated by solid circles (Ixodes ricinus) or triangles (Dermacentor reticulatus) and named with their unique identifier, tick species, geographic location, biological source and WHO country code. Only sequences of the denoted lengths were included in the displayed phylogenies. The number of sequences from Belarus within a compressed cluster and the tick species are given in brackets. BLRS, sequences from Belarus obtained in this study; I.r. = Ixodes ricinus; D.r. = Dermacentor reticulatus; RRG, Rickettsia rickettsii group; Veg = Vegetation, BLR, Belarus. Only bootstrap values above 60 are shown.
Table 4.
Pathogen diversity in questing I. ricinus and D. reticulatus ticks.
Table 5.
Coinfections in questing and feeding ticks.