Ntiamoa-Baidu Y, Carr-Saunders C, Matthews B E, Preston P M, Walker A R
Zoology Department, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana.
Bull Entomol Res. 2005 Jun;95(3):205-19. doi: 10.1079/ber2004352.
The host ranges of a collection of 21 tick species found on wild mammals in the savanna, forests and coastal zone of Ghana suggested that most species were adapted to feeding mainly on host species within a single mammalian order, i.e. on artiodactyls (bovids/suids), carnivores, rodents or pholidotes (pangolins). Only a few species were dispersed evenly across a range of orders. Seven out of ten of the most common ticks on forest mammals were significantly associated with a particular host species or a group of closely related host species, which could be viewed as their major host or hosts, but they were also recorded much less frequently on a wide range of host species. Two other species were confined to their major hosts. Only one species appeared to be widely dispersed on forest mammals and to lack a particular major host. The majority of tick species therefore occurred on hosts with very distinctive biological, behavioural and ecological characteristics. The study provided no evidence to support the view that host specificity is an artefact of sampling. Finding that the tick species on Ghanaian wild mammals occurred on particular hosts, as well as in distinct habitats, indicated that tick-host associations are important for tick survival and confirmed the importance of climate and vegetation in tick distribution.
对在加纳热带稀树草原、森林和沿海地区野生哺乳动物身上发现的21种蜱虫进行的宿主范围研究表明，大多数蜱虫物种主要适应以单一哺乳纲内的宿主物种为食，即偶蹄目动物（牛科动物/猪科动物）、食肉动物、啮齿动物或鳞甲目动物（穿山甲）。只有少数物种在多个目之间均匀分布。森林哺乳动物身上十种最常见的蜱虫中有七种与特定宿主物种或一组密切相关的宿主物种显著相关，这些宿主可被视为它们的主要宿主，但它们在广泛的宿主物种身上的记录频率也低得多。另外两种蜱虫则局限于它们的主要宿主。只有一种蜱虫似乎在森林哺乳动物中广泛分布且没有特定的主要宿主。因此，大多数蜱虫物种出现在具有非常独特的生物学、行为学和生态学特征的宿主身上。该研究没有提供证据支持宿主特异性是采样假象这一观点。发现加纳野生哺乳动物身上的蜱虫物种出现在特定宿主以及不同栖息地，表明蜱虫与宿主的关联对蜱虫生存很重要，并证实了气候和植被在蜱虫分布中的重要性。
