Precise and accessible techniques for measuring metabolic responses to environmental stress are essential to allow the likely impacts of climate and climate change on tick distribution, abundance and phenology to be predicted. A more detailed understanding of the metabolic profile of ticks may also help the complex responses to pathogen infection and effects on transmission to be evaluated. Here, a series of biochemical protocols employing spectrophotometric methods are used to determine the entire energy budget of ticks. Protein, carbohydrate, total lipid, neutral lipid and glycogen were measured in individual Ixodes ricinus nymphs and adults. Two key trends were identified: in adults, protein was relatively more abundant than in nymphs, whereas in nymphs, glycogen and carbohydrate were more abundant than in adults, with glycogen alone composing 39% of the mass of metabolites in nymphs compared to 15 and 10% in females and males, respectively. The methods used were able to successfully separate neutral lipids from the polar phospholipids and the importance of distinguishing stored from structural lipid in estimates of lipid reserves is emphasised. The results demonstrate that the spectrophotometric approaches deliver relatively rapid and reliable estimates of the total energetic budget and can be used to quantify the metabolic profiles of individual ticks, demonstrating their suitability for use in ecological and epidemiological studies.

中文翻译：

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确定the虱的总能量收支。

精确而易用的技术用于测量对环境压力的代谢反应，对于预测气候和气候变化对tick的分布，丰度和物候学的可能影响至关重要。对of的代谢特征的更详细的了解也可能有助于对病原体感染的复杂反应以及对传播的影响进行评估。在这里，一系列采用分光光度法的生化方案被用来确定tick的整个能量收支。在单个蓖麻（Ixodes ricinus）中测量蛋白质，碳水化合物，总脂质，中性脂质和糖原若虫和成人。确定了两个主要趋势：在成虫中，蛋白质要比若虫相对丰富，而在若虫中，糖原和碳水化合物比成人要丰富，仅糖原就占若虫代谢产物质量的39％，而15和10 ％分别在女性和男性中。所使用的方法能够成功地从极性磷脂中分离出中性脂质，并着重指出了在估计脂质储备中区分结构脂质和储存脂质的重要性。结果表明，分光光度法可对总能量预算进行相对快速和可靠的估算，并可用于量化单个tick的代谢谱，表明它们适用于生态和流行病学研究。