Abstract
Surveillance to investigate the wildlife–vector transmission cycle of the human pathogen Borrelia miyamotoi in California, USA, revealed infections in dusky-footed woodrats, brush mice, and California mice. Phylogenetic analyses suggest a single, well-supported clade of B. miyamotoi is circulating in California.
Highlights
Surveillance to investigate the wildlife–vector transmission cycle of the human pathogen Borrelia miyamotoi in California, USA, revealed infections in dusky-footed woodrats, brush mice, and California mice
Surveillance of B. miyamotoi in California has focused on ticks, and little is known about infection in wildlife hosts
We investigated B. miyamotoi infection status in small mammals at 3 California sites where the bacterium is present in tick populations [3,5]
Summary
In nearby Alameda County, B. miyamotoi was not observed in small mammals [10]; possible reasons are that the spirochete is rarer in this locality (NIP = 0.4% in Alameda study sites), that mammal capture periods were dispersed across multiple years and not as coincident with nymphal tick activity, or that brush mice and California mice were not captured at that location. None of the animals captured in the redwood habitat (Thornewood OSP) were infected with Borrelia spp., the sample size was small at this location (Table 1). Co-infections of B. burgdorferi and B. miyamotoi have previously been reported from mice and ticks in the northeastern United States [9] and from ticks in Marin County, California [4]. Sequences from I. pacificus ticks previously collected in the San Francisco Bay area were identical to the sequences obtained from rodent infections
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