Institut Supérieur des Sciences Biologiques Appliquées de Tunis, Université Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia.
Unit of Vector Ecology, Institut Pasteur de Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia.
J Med Entomol. 2020 May 4;57(3):952-956. doi: 10.1093/jme/tjz216.
In the present study, we report the sympatric occurrence of Ixodes ricinus (Linnaeus, 1758) and Ixodes inopinatus (Estrada-Peña, Nava, and Petney, 2014) in Tunisia. In total, 173 adult Ixodes ticks were collected from four sites (El Jouza, Tamra, Aïn Soltan, and Jbel Zaghouan) between February and April 2017, a period corresponding to the peak of activity of I. ricinus in North Africa. The morphological characters corresponded to both species; thus, we generated a total of 28 16S rRNA sequences and compared them with previously published data in GenBank. The two species were sympatric in Tamra, Aïn Soltan, and El Jouza, whereas collections in Jbel Zaghouan only yielded I. inopinatus. These results indicate that the two taxa are widespread in the humid area of northern Tunisia. The one tick collected in Jbel Zaghouan suggests that the distribution of at least I. inopinatus might extend to the sub-humid area. More studies are needed to fully comprehend the systematic status of the two taxonomic entities using multiple molecular markers and morphological characters; integrating these two identification methods are a necessary step toward a better understanding of the ecology and epidemiology of tick-borne diseases in Tunisia.
在本研究中，我们报告了在突尼斯同时出现的硬蜱属（Ixodes ricinus）（Linnaeus，1758）和伊氏硬蜱（Ixodes inopinatus）（Estrada-Peña、Nava 和 Petney，2014）。2017 年 2 月至 4 月期间，我们从四个地点（El Jouza、Tamra、Aïn Soltan 和 Jbel Zaghouan）共采集了 173 只成年蜱，这段时间对应于北非硬蜱活动的高峰期。这些形态特征与两种蜱类都相符；因此，我们共生成了 28 个 16S rRNA 序列，并将其与 GenBank 中之前发表的数据进行了比较。在 Tamra、Aïn Soltan 和 El Jouza 这三个地点，两种物种同时存在，而在 Jbel Zaghouan 采集的样本只发现了伊氏硬蜱。这些结果表明，这两个分类群在突尼斯北部湿润地区广泛分布。在 Jbel Zaghouan 采集的一只蜱表明，至少伊氏硬蜱的分布范围可能延伸到半湿润地区。需要进行更多的研究，使用多个分子标记和形态特征来充分了解这两个分类实体的系统地位；整合这两种鉴定方法是更好地理解突尼斯蜱传疾病的生态学和流行病学的必要步骤。
