Biology Program, Green Mountain College, One Brennan Circle, Poultney, VT, 05764, United States.
The Math Center, Green Mountain College, One Brennan Circle, Poultney, VT, 05764, United States.
Ticks Tick Borne Dis. 2019 Apr;10(3):523-527. doi: 10.1016/j.ttbdis.2019.01.002. Epub 2019 Jan 12.
Tick microbiomes may play an important role in pathogen transmission. However, the drivers of microbiome variation are poorly understood, and this limitation has impeded mechanistic understanding of the functions of microbial communities for pathogen acquisition. The goal of this research was to characterize the role of the blood meal host in structuring the microbiome of Ixodes scapularis, the primary vector of Lyme disease in the eastern United States, and to determine if ticks that fed from different host species harbor distinct bacterial communities. We performed high-throughput 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing on I. scapularis nymphs that fed as larvae from known wildlife hosts: raccoon, Virginia opossum, striped skunk, red squirrel or gray squirrel. Using Analysis of Similarity, we found significant differences in the abundance-weighted Unifrac distance matrix among ticks fed from different host species (p = 0.048) and a highly significant difference in the weighted and unweighted Unifrac matrices for individuals within species (p < 0.01). This finding of associations between the blood meal host and I. scapularis microbiome demonstrates that the blood meal host may be a driver of microbiome variation that should be accounted for in studies of pathogen acquisition by ticks.
蜱虫微生物组可能在病原体传播中发挥重要作用。然而，微生物组变异的驱动因素尚未被充分了解，这一局限性阻碍了对微生物群落获取病原体功能的机制理解。本研究的目的是描述宿主血液在构建美国东部莱姆病主要传播媒介肩突硬蜱微生物组中的作用，并确定是否从不同宿主物种吸食血液的蜱虫携带不同的细菌群落。我们对幼虫时期从已知野生动物宿主（浣熊、弗吉尼亚负鼠、条纹臭鼬、红松鼠或灰松鼠）吸食血液的肩突硬蜱若虫进行了高通量 16S rDNA 扩增子测序。使用相似性分析，我们发现来自不同宿主物种的蜱虫在丰度加权 Unifrac 距离矩阵中存在显著差异（p=0.048），并且在种内个体的加权和非加权 Unifrac 矩阵中存在高度显著差异（p<0.01）。这种宿主血液与肩突硬蜱微生物组之间的关联发现表明，宿主血液可能是微生物组变异的驱动因素之一，在研究蜱虫获取病原体时应考虑到这一因素。
