@article{8b1d9432ba1a4978904ecb5ac581bd9f,
title = "Potential effects of blood meal host on bacterial community composition in Ixodes scapularis nymphs",
abstract = "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.",
keywords = "Ixodes scapularis, Lyme disease, Microbiome, Vector-host interactions",
author = "Landesman, {William J.} and Kenneth Mulder and Allan, {Brian F.} and Bashor, {Laura A.} and Felicia Keesing and Kathleen LoGiudice and Ostfeld, {Richard S.}",
note = "Funding Information: This research was funded by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) to W.J.L. from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P20GM103449 , an award by the Nathan Cummings Foundation to R.S.O . and National Institutes of Health Grant AI40076 to R.S.O. and F.K. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIGMS or NIH. Funding Information: This research was funded by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) to W.J.L. from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P20GM103449, an award by the Nathan Cummings Foundation to R.S.O. and National Institutes of Health Grant AI40076 to R.S.O. and F.K. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIGMS or NIH. We thank Bonnie Nightingale, Andrea Silvestri, Jada Lee and L. Page Fredericks for performing DNA extractions and laboratory assistance and Obadiah Mulder for help with data analysis. We thank Tim Hunter of the Advanced Genome Technologies Core Facilities at the University of Vermont and Sheryl White of the University of Vermont's Neuroscience COBRE Molecular Core (Burlington, VT) for consultation on qPCR and for preparation of standards. We thank Dr. Robert Cluss of Middlebury College for his advice throughout the project. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 Elsevier GmbH",
year = "2019",
month = apr,
doi = "10.1016/j.ttbdis.2019.01.002",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "10",
pages = "523--527",
journal = "Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases",
issn = "1877-959X",
publisher = "Elsevier GmbH",
number = "3",
}