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Features of Engorgement of Ixodes ricinus Ticks Infesting the Northern White-Breasted Hedgehog in an Urban Park

In this work we exploited the parallel dense tick and hedgehog populations of an urban park in Budapest, Hungary as a good host–parasite model to obtain detailed data about this physiological relationship. Over a 27-week period from April to October, 57 hedgehogs were captured in an urban park and k...

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Autores principales: Egyed, László, Nagy, Dávidné, Lang, Zsolt
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10145640/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37110304
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms11040881
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author Egyed, László
Nagy, Dávidné
Lang, Zsolt
author_facet Egyed, László
Nagy, Dávidné
Lang, Zsolt
author_sort Egyed, László
collection PubMed
description In this work we exploited the parallel dense tick and hedgehog populations of an urban park in Budapest, Hungary as a good host–parasite model to obtain detailed data about this physiological relationship. Over a 27-week period from April to October, 57 hedgehogs were captured in an urban park and kept for 10–14 days in animal house. All dropped off ticks were sampled, which allowed us to draw more a detailed picture of Ixodes ricinus–hedgehog relationships. The results indicated that the hedgehog is an effective host for ticks (prevalence: 100%) and the mean intensity of infestation was 83.25. Of the male ticks, 68.42% dropped off dead; 1.56% of the dropped off nymphs and 11.4% of the larvae finished their bloodmeal with red cuticles, while 5.79% of the females could not finish their blood meal, and dropped off dried, dead, or shrunken. We applied novel statistical methods of survival analysis of prevalent cohorts to estimate the whole attachment times of ticks from the observed attachment times, having no information about when the ticks attached to their hosts. Mean attachment times were 4 days for larvae, 5 days for nymphs, 10 days for females, and 8 days for males. On the first day after capture of the hosts, fewer females, nymphs, and larvae detached engorged than had been predicted, but this was not true for males. Mean intensity of infestation per host was 1.4 for males, 6.7 for females, 45.0 for nymphs, and 29.3 for larvae. As regards seasonality, the activity of all stages of ticks consisted of several smaller peaks and considerably differed by season. Studies of the dense tick–host populations of this natural habitat could provide further valuable data about tick–host relations, the data of which cannot be drawn from most other hedgehog habitats.
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spelling pubmed-101456402023-04-29 Features of Engorgement of Ixodes ricinus Ticks Infesting the Northern White-Breasted Hedgehog in an Urban Park Egyed, László Nagy, Dávidné Lang, Zsolt Microorganisms Article In this work we exploited the parallel dense tick and hedgehog populations of an urban park in Budapest, Hungary as a good host–parasite model to obtain detailed data about this physiological relationship. Over a 27-week period from April to October, 57 hedgehogs were captured in an urban park and kept for 10–14 days in animal house. All dropped off ticks were sampled, which allowed us to draw more a detailed picture of Ixodes ricinus–hedgehog relationships. The results indicated that the hedgehog is an effective host for ticks (prevalence: 100%) and the mean intensity of infestation was 83.25. Of the male ticks, 68.42% dropped off dead; 1.56% of the dropped off nymphs and 11.4% of the larvae finished their bloodmeal with red cuticles, while 5.79% of the females could not finish their blood meal, and dropped off dried, dead, or shrunken. We applied novel statistical methods of survival analysis of prevalent cohorts to estimate the whole attachment times of ticks from the observed attachment times, having no information about when the ticks attached to their hosts. Mean attachment times were 4 days for larvae, 5 days for nymphs, 10 days for females, and 8 days for males. On the first day after capture of the hosts, fewer females, nymphs, and larvae detached engorged than had been predicted, but this was not true for males. Mean intensity of infestation per host was 1.4 for males, 6.7 for females, 45.0 for nymphs, and 29.3 for larvae. As regards seasonality, the activity of all stages of ticks consisted of several smaller peaks and considerably differed by season. Studies of the dense tick–host populations of this natural habitat could provide further valuable data about tick–host relations, the data of which cannot be drawn from most other hedgehog habitats. MDPI 2023-03-29 /pmc/articles/PMC10145640/ /pubmed/37110304 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms11040881 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Egyed, László
Nagy, Dávidné
Lang, Zsolt
Features of Engorgement of Ixodes ricinus Ticks Infesting the Northern White-Breasted Hedgehog in an Urban Park
title Features of Engorgement of Ixodes ricinus Ticks Infesting the Northern White-Breasted Hedgehog in an Urban Park
title_full Features of Engorgement of Ixodes ricinus Ticks Infesting the Northern White-Breasted Hedgehog in an Urban Park
title_fullStr Features of Engorgement of Ixodes ricinus Ticks Infesting the Northern White-Breasted Hedgehog in an Urban Park
title_full_unstemmed Features of Engorgement of Ixodes ricinus Ticks Infesting the Northern White-Breasted Hedgehog in an Urban Park
title_short Features of Engorgement of Ixodes ricinus Ticks Infesting the Northern White-Breasted Hedgehog in an Urban Park
title_sort features of engorgement of ixodes ricinus ticks infesting the northern white-breasted hedgehog in an urban park
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10145640/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37110304
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms11040881
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