Scientists from Russia have discovered three previously unknown species of ticks that can be carriers of diseases such as plague and tick-borne encephalitis. Description of insects is presented in the Persian Journal of Acarology.
One of the ticks was discovered in the bat collection of the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University in 2020. The other two were collected by scientists from the Tyumen Medical University from bats caught in Buryatia and Tuva and then released into the wild. Chiroptera are carriers of many pathogens, especially COVID-19.
The discovered parasites belong to two families, Spinturnicidae and Macronyssidae. Representatives of the first carry bartonellosis, and the second – tick-borne encephalitis, borreliosis, West Nile fever, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, tularemia and plague.
In their structure and shape, ticks do not resemble those previously described. Researchers say that they most likely lived in the south of the Asian part of Russia – in China.
Source: Ferra
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