Fig 1.
Collection and identification of Alectorobius (Ornithodoros) puertoricensis in Ciudad Caucel.
Shown is a map of the state of Yucatan (A), the number 1 in panel A shows the location of Merida city (892,000 persons by the 2020 national census). The left upper corner map shows the location of this state in Mexico (A). The collection sites were in Ciudad Caucel (B). The terrain map and the numbers indicate location of the burrows (B). The white arrows in (C), panels 1 through 4, point to where ticks were collected. In (C), C1 to C4 point to the respective locations in panel (B). Terrain maps were obtained from USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain: http://eros.usgs.gov/#).
Table 1.
Characteristics of collected ticksa and infected non-treated mice.
Fig 2.
Morphological and molecular identification of A. puertoricensis.
Stereo microscope images of a female A. puertoricensis specimen. The dorsal view is shown in (A) and the ventral in (B). The white arrow points to the genital aperture. Scale bars: 3 mm.
Fig 3.
Phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequence fragments from soft ticks Alectorobius spp.
The analysis was performed with the maximum likelihood method using the GTR + G model of nucleotide substitution. Bootstrap analysis, shown in branches, was performed with 1000 replications. Shown in bold letters are the sequences of the analyzed ticks from this study. In the gray box is the group talaje. In parenthesis the accession numbers at NCBI. Bar displays the differences between sequences (0.20). Ixodes scapularis was used as an outgroup.
Fig 4.
Maximum-likelihood tree constructed from 16S rRNA partial sequences of various Borrelia species.
The analysis was performed with the amino acid substitution model Blosum62. Sequences generated in this study are in bold. Numbers represent bootstrap support generated from 1000 replications. The NCBI accession numbers are in brackets and Borrelia burgdorferi was used as outgroup.
Fig 5.
Phylogenomic analysis of B. puertoricensis CAU1.
The isolate is shown boxed with a red rectangle and additional Borrelia genomes were included (A). The tree was generated with an edge-linked proportional partition model with 1,000 ultra-fast bootstraps. Scale bar indicates 0.02 substitutions per site. The genome of CAU1 is shown in (B) and is composed of 16 linear plasmids (lp) and 5 circular plasmids (cp). The numbers indicate the approximate size in base pairs and the colored triangles show the plasmid maintenance genes. PF, plasmid family.
Table 2.
Amino acid identity between BipA homologsa,b.