Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26
November 2020 | 12(15): 17165–17167
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
doi: https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.4449.12.15.17165-17167
#4449 | Received 28 July 2018 | Final
received 06 October 2020 | Finally accepted 10 October 2020
Amblyomma gervaisi (Ixodida:
Ixodidae: Amblyomma)
infestation in a Rat Snake from northwestern Himalayan region: a case study
Aman D. Moudgil 1,
Ankur Sharma 2, Adarsh Kumar 3, Amit Singla 4 & Surender Bansal 5
1 Department of Veterinary
Parasitology, 2 Department of Veterinary Medicine, 3,4 Department
of Veterinary Surgery and Radiology, 5 Teaching Veterinary Clinical
Complex
DGCN College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, CSK
Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, Palampur, Himachal
Pradesh 176062, India.
1 moudgil.aman@gmail.com (corresponding
author), 2 drankur.vcm@gmail.com, 3 adarsh9kan@gmail.com,
4 drasingla@gmail.com, 5 mailme.sbansal@gmail.com
Editor: L.D. Singla, Guru Angad Dev
Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana. Date
of publication: 26 November 2020 (online & print)
Citation: Moudgil, A.D., A. Sharma, A.
Kumar, A. Singla & S. Bansal (2020). Amblyomma gervaisi (Ixodida:
Ixodidae: Amblyomma)
infestation in a Rat Snake from northwestern
Himalayan region: a case study. Journal of Threatened Taxa 12(15): 17165–17167. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.4449.12.15.17165-17167
Copyright: © Moudgil et al. 2020. Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the
author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: None.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: Authors are thankful to the Dean,
Dr. G.C. Negi College of Veterinary and Animal
Sciences for providing the necessary facilities to carry out the research work.
Climate change, especially
climate warming not only governs the density variation of arthropods, but also
population preponderance of their hosts, changes in periods of activity and
variations in geographical distribution (Moudgil & Singla 2013). Ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) act as vectors for the transmission of a wide
range of pathogens including bacteria, virus, rickettsia and protozoa (de la
Fuente et al. 2008). Along with
vertebrates, ticks can also infest reptiles and transmit ehrlichiosis,
anaplasmosis and rickettsiosis. The
presence of novel spotted fever group rickettsiae, Anaplasma and Ehrlichia
species prevalent in wild snakes has been demonstrated by molecular
evidences (Kho et al. 2015). The ticks
infesting snakes are also responsible for transmission of zoonotic pathogens Coxiella burnetti and
Rickettsia honei to humans in India (Pandit et
al. 2011). In the past, Amblyomma (Aponomma)
species have been reported from pythons, cobra and rat snakes in southern
India (Soundararajan et al. 2013; Catherine et al.
2017), Western Ghats (Pandit et al. 2011), and eastern parts of India (Patra et
al. 2017). Ticks are also responsible
for transmitting various pathogens, which result in pneumonia in snakes (Marcus
1971). Also, they are responsible for
blood borne infections such as Aeromonas septicaemia,
which had led to the deaths of snakes (Rosenthal 1997). The changes in climatic conditions especially
climate warming have rendered many vectors including ticks to distribute in
newer and naïve regions, i.e., species of tropical and subtropical regions
become more vulnerable to expand their niche to temperate regions (Moudgil
& Singla 2013). In case of arthropod
vectors, along with abiotic environmental conditions, availability of hosts
also plays an important role for preponderance.
The present study thus reports the presence of Amblyomma
gervaisi in the snakes of northwestern
Himalayan region.
A Rat Snake Ptyas
mucosa stuck into a basin pipe strainer was brought to the Teaching
Veterinary Clinical Complex, Palampur (Himachal Pradesh), to get it released.
On thorough examination, the snake was found infested with ticks. The ticks were collected carefully without
damaging the body parts and were introduced to further processing for
identification. The ticks were processed
as per Jain & Jain (2011) and identified following the key of Georgi et al.
(1990) and Barnard & Durden (2000).
These were cleared in 10% potassium hydroxide, dehydrated in ascending
grades of alcohol, again cleared in cedar wood oil, placed in xylene for one
minute and then finally mounted in Canada balsam. The ticks were identified up to the species
level based on the characters of whole male tick, basis capitulum, pedipalps,
presence or absence of festoons, anal groove, and comma shaped cervical
grooves.
Earlier, Amblyomma
gervaisi was believed not to hold any zoonotic
significance and Georgi et al. (1990) had suspected man, felids, canids, and
domestic animals as its probable targets (Catherine et al. 2017). The tick was found responsible for
transmission of zoonotic pathogens Coxiella
burnetti and Rickettsia honei
to humans in India (Pandit et al. 2011).
The actual appearance of the male tick is like a tear drop (Image 1), as
it is dorso-ventrally flattened and posterior
extremity is wider than the anterior.
Generally, the morphology of the ixodid ticks
provides them protection from external odds of the environment (Ghosh & Misra 2012). The
capitulum or basis capituli of the tick retrieved was
dorso-ventrally rounded flask-shaped (Image 2),
consisted of intact mouth parts bearing mandible, hypostome and a pair of
pedipalps. The observations were in
concordance with the findings of Ghosh & Misra
(2012); whereas the shapes of the basis capituli of
other Amblyomma species vary from rectangular
to trapezoid (Barros-Battesti et al. 2005a,b). The mandible was the extension of the dorsal
capitulum and hypostome lying ventrally juxta-positioned to the mandibular
sheath. The sensory palps originated
from the base of the hypostome consisting of four articles, where the first two
articles were fused (Image 2). The third
article was the longest of all and about double the size of the fourth
article. There was presence of
comma-shaped cervical grooves (Image 2).
The spiracles were oval in appearance with a round anterior end and a
pointed posterior end (Image 3). The
genital orifice, oval in appearance was situated in a median line just behind
the basis capituli (Image 4), in between the second
pair of coxa. Anus was present at the
posterior end behind the genital opening, consisting of a posterior anal groove
(Image 4). The tick was festooned with 11 distinct festoons (Image 1). All the observations in the present study
were in line with the findings of Ghosh & Misra
(2012), delineating the ticks to be of the Amblyomma
gervaisi species.
Although in the present study the
ticks were recovered from under the scales of the snake, which was in
concordance with the observations of Catherine et al. (2017); in the earlier
study, Rosenthal (1997) recovered the ticks from the blood swollen abdomen
also. The previous studies (Mader 1996; Catherine et al. 2017) also highlighted the
skin infections including dermatitis, dysecdysis, and
lumps associated with the tick infestation in snakes, but no such observation
was recorded in the present study. The
observation could be attributed to low ectoparasitic infestation in the present
case. All the previous reports of the
tick A. gervaisi are restricted to the
southern, eastern and western parts of India (Alwar 1960; Pandit et al. 2011; Soundararajan et al. 2013; Catherine et al. 2017; Patra et
al. 2017) and the present study claims to be the first documented report of the
ticks from a rat snake of the northwestern Himalayan region. The preponderance of the ticks and other
vectors in naïve areas could be considered as an aftermath of climate change,
most importantly climate warming.
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