Prevalence of five tick-borne bacterial genera in adult Ixodes scapularis removed from white-tailed deer in western Tennessee

Table 1 PCR results of adult Ixodes scapularis (n =47) collected from 15 white-tailed deer harvested at AMES ¹

*Ixodes scapularis*	No. screened (Male/Female)	Bacterial genera screened
*Ixodes scapularis*	No. screened (Male/Female)	*Anaplasma*spp. (% Pos.)	*Babesia*spp. (% Pos.)	*Borrelia*spp. (% Pos.)	*Ehrlichia*spp. (% Pos.)	*Rickettsia*spp. (% Pos.)	Total positive(% Pos.)
Ixodes scapularis collected from white-tailed deer in 2011
Engorged	0/9	0/1	0/0	0/0	0/0	0/8	0/9
Crawling	8/0	0/0	0/0	0/0	0/0	2/0	2/0
Total	17	1 (5.9%)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	10 (58.8%)	11 (64.7%)
Ixodes scapularis collected from white-tailed deer in 2012
Engorged	0/14	0/0	0/0	0/0	0/3	0/14	0/17
Crawling	12/4	0/0	0/0	0/0	0/0	1/2	1/2
Total	30	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	3 (10.0%)	17 (56.7%)	20 (66.7%)
Total Ixodes scapularis collected from AMES white-tailed deer
Engorged	0/23	0/1	0/0	0/0	0/3	0/22	0/26
Crawling	20/4	0/0	0/0	0/0	0/0	3/2	3/2
Total	47	1 (2.1%)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	3 (6.4%)	27 (57.4%)	31 (66.0%)

¹Ticks were either classified as engorged (attached with mouthparts in the host animal’s skin through physical evidence such as tissue attached to mouthparts and/or expanded idiosoma) or crawling (attached on the host, but no physical evidence of feeding). Primers targeted groEL for Anaplasma and Ehrlichia spp, NSS for Babesia spp, 23S and flaB for Borrelia spp, and ompA for Rickettsia spp.
The total number positive in this table shows the number of PCR-positive results (including co-infections); consequently, the total number of infections exceeds the total number of positive ticks.

ISSN: 1756-3305