Abstract
BackgroundA variety of human diseases transmitted by arthropod vectors, including ticks, are emerging around the globe. Birds are known to be hosts of ticks and can disperse exotic ticks and tick-borne pathogens. In Taiwan, previous studies have focused predominantly on mammals, leaving the role of birds in the maintenance of ticks and dissemination of tick-borne pathogens undetermined.MethodsTicks were collected opportunistically when birds were studied from 1995 to 2013. Furthermore, to improve knowledge on the prevalence and mean load of tick infestation on birds in Taiwan, ticks were thoroughly searched for when birds were mist-netted at seven sites between September 2014 and April 2016 in eastern Taiwan. Ticks were identified based on both morphological and molecular information and were screened for potential tick-borne pathogens, including the genera Anaplasma, Babesia, Borrelia, Ehrlichia and Rickettsia. Finally, a list of hard tick species collected from birds in Taiwan was compiled based on past work and the current study.ResultsNineteen ticks (all larvae) were recovered from four of the 3096 unique mist-netted bird individuals, yielding a mean load of 0.006 ticks/individual and an overall prevalence of 0.13%. A total of 139 ticks from birds, comprising 48 larvae, 35 nymphs, 55 adults and one individual of unknown life stage, were collected from 1995 to 2016, and 11 species of four genera were identified, including three newly recorded species (Haemaphysalis wellingtoni, Ixodes columnae and Ixodes turdus). A total of eight tick-borne pathogens were detected, with five species (Borrelia turdi, Anaplasma sp. clone BJ01, Ehrlichia sp. BL157-9, Rickettsia helvetica and Rickettsia monacensis) not previously isolated in Taiwan. Overall, 16 tick species of five genera have been recorded feeding on birds, including nine species first discovered in this study.ConclusionOur study demonstrates the paucity of information on ticks of birds and emphasizes the need for more research on ticks of birds in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Moreover, some newly recorded ticks and tick-borne pathogens were found only on migratory birds, demonstrating the necessity of further surveillance on these highly mobile species.
Highlights
A variety of human diseases transmitted by arthropod vectors, including ticks, are emerging around the globe
Our study demonstrates the paucity of information on ticks of birds and emphasizes the need for more research on ticks of birds in Taiwan and Southeast Asia
Two-thirds of the 18 detections of pathogens were on ticks collected from migratory birds, the pale thrush (T. pallidus) (Table 4). This is one of the few studies focusing on bird-derived ticks and their pathogens in Southeast Asia, showing 11 tick species, of which H. wellingtoni, I. columnae and I. turdus are new records for Taiwan, and H. flava, H. formosensis, H. hystricis, I. granulatus, I. nipponensis and R. haemaphysaloides have been collected from birds in Taiwan for the first time
Summary
A variety of human diseases transmitted by arthropod vectors, including ticks, are emerging around the globe. Small mammals are often one of the primary hosts for immature ticks [6], but a growing number of studies have revealed the significance of birds as hosts, as well as the role migratory birds play in the long-distance dissemination of ticks and tick-borne pathogens [7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Migratory birds have been implicated in the spread of a variety of tick-borne diseases by carrying pathogen-infected ticks, including Lyme disease and Lyme borreliosis [7, 23, 24], tick-borne encephalitis [25], babesiosis [26], anaplasmosis [27] and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever [28]
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