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Rhipicephalus sanguineus s.l. detection in the Slovak Republic

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Abstract

Herein we report the first occurrence of Rhipicephalus sanguineus s.l. in the Slovak Republic. Sixty fed and unfed Rh. sanguineus s.l. ticks were collected from an apartment in the capital city of the Slovak Republic (Bratislava) and a family house in the town of Sereď in southwestern Slovakia. Based on molecular analyses of the cytochrome C oxidase subunit 1 (cox1) and 16S rRNA genes, all the ticks clustered in the Rhipicephalus sp. IIa mitochondrial “temperate” lineage, which contains geographically similar ticks from the mid- and western Mediterranean regions. Rhipicephalus sanguineus s.l. is not a part of the Slovak hard tick fauna.

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The DNA sequences analysed during the current study are available in the Genbank®.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank M. Kautman for making the photos of ticks.

This study was financially supported by the project of Slovak research and development agency APVV 16-0463 and APVV 16-0518, the Scientific Grant Agency of Ministry of Education and Slovak Academy of Science VEGA 2/0119/17 and 2/0021/21 and by a joint project between Ukrainian and Slovak Academies of Sciences 2020-2022.

Funding

This study was financially supported by the project of Slovak research and development agency APVV 16–0463 and APVV 16–0518, the Scientific Grant Agency of Ministry of Education and Slovak Academy of Science VEGA 2/0119/17 and 2/0021/21 and by a joint project between Ukrainian and Slovak Academies of Sciences 2020–2022.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Zoology SAS, Dúbravská cesta 9, Bratislava, 845 06, Slovakia

    Yuliya M. Didyk, Barbara Mangová, Jasna Kraljik, Michal Stanko & Marketa Derdáková

  2. I.I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology NAS of Ukraine, B. Khmelnytskogo, 15, Kyiv, 01030, Ukraine

    Yuliya M. Didyk

  3. Institute of Parasitology SAS, Hlinkova 3, 040 01, Košice, Slovakia

    Michal Stanko

  4. Institute of Virology, Biomedical Research Center SAS, Dúbravská cesta 9, Bratislava, 845 05, Slovakia

    Eva Spitalská

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  1. Yuliya M. Didyk
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  2. Barbara Mangová
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  3. Jasna Kraljik
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  4. Michal Stanko
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  5. Eva Spitalská
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  6. Marketa Derdáková
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material collection [Markéta Derdáková, Jasna Kraljik and Eva pitalská]. Morfological identification performed by [Michal Stanko]. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [Yuliya M. Didyk] and [Barbara Mangová]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [Yuliya M. Didyk] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Supervision performed by [Markéta Derdáková].

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Correspondence to Yuliya M. Didyk.

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Didyk, Y.M., Mangová, B., Kraljik, J. et al. Rhipicephalus sanguineus s.l. detection in the Slovak Republic. Biologia 77, 1523–1529 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11756-021-00801-1

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