Fig. 7
Histopathological analysis of tick-infested skins. a Skin biopsies were fixed in formaldehyde and embedded in paraffin. Five micron sections were stained with hematoxylin and eosin. The blue arrowheads indicate the cement cone produced by R. microplus showing the center of tick lesion (Zones 1 or 2, Additional file 1: Figure S1b), black arrowheads indicate the cellular infiltration in the epidermis surrounding cement cone. Scale-bar: 50 μm. b The inflammatory infiltrating cells were counted into the dermis of tick-resistant (white boxes) and tick-susceptible (gray boxes) from areas of 0.0625 mm2, and the means of each bovine were used from further analyses. Values followed by the same capital letter differ significantly (P < 0.05; in intra-breed comparisons). Asterisks indicate significant differences in inter-breed comparisons: *P < 0.05; **P < 0.001