Abstract
Free-ranging ticks are widely known to be restricted to the ground level of vegetation. Here, we document the capture of the tick species Amblyomma tapirellum in light traps placed in the forest canopy of Barro Colorado Island, central Panama. A total of forty eight adults and three nymphs were removed from carbon dioxide-octenol baited CDC light traps suspended 20 meters above the ground during surveys for forest canopy mosquitoes. To our knowledge, this represents the first report of questing ticks from the canopy of tropical forests. Our finding suggests a novel ecological relationship between A. tapirellum and arboreal mammals, perhaps monkeys that come to the ground to drink or to feed on fallen fruits.
Highlights
Increasing interest in tick-borne diseases in the Neotropics and in Panama during the last decade has fuelled studies on tick biology, behavior and distribution in this region[1,2,3]
A. tapirellum is one of the most common species collected with a cloth dragged through the understory vegetation, but it is not known to be found arboreal mammals (Table 1), and in addition, a recent survey of tick occurrence on Panamanian birds found no evidence that this species feeds on birds (Miller et al, in prep.)
We report A. tapirellum collected from mosquito light traps placed in the canopy of old-growth lowland tropical forest on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in central Panama
Summary
Increasing interest in tick-borne diseases in the Neotropics and in Panama during the last decade has fuelled studies on tick biology, behavior and distribution in this region[1,2,3] These studies have focused on tick species associated with humans and domesticated animals, likely due to their role as vectors of disease agents[1,2,4]. We report A. tapirellum collected from mosquito light traps placed in the canopy of old-growth lowland tropical forest on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in central Panama. To our knowledge, this is the first report of ticks being collected in the canopy of Neotropical forests and highlights the potentially complex ecological relationships of likely vectors of zoonotic disease in undisrupted forest habitats
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