Incidence of B. burgdorferi in tick populations of Upshur County, West Virginia

Authors

  • Michael T Winters West Virginia Wesleyan College
  • Melanie S Sal West Virginia Wesleyan College
  • Kimberly A. Bjorgo-Thorne West Virginia Wesleyan College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v91i1.599

Keywords:

Borrelia, Ixodes, monitoring,

Abstract

Lyme disease is the most wide-spread vector-borne disease in the eastern United States. Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, that is transmitted by a tick vector, most commonly Ixodes scapularus.  In this study, 400 ticks were collected from around Upshur county, West Virginia, and tested by PCR for the presence of B. burgdorferi DNA.  Tick specimen belong to Ixodes scapularus, Rhipicephalus sanguineus, or are unidentified. One unidentified sample, which tested positive for B. burgdorferi, has been tentatively identified as the new invasive Haemaphysalis longicorni. This is the first report of the Asian Longhorned Tick carrying B. burgdorferi in West Virginia. In the future, this ongoing project will expand its sampling techniques, as well as expand testing for the presence of other possible tick-borne diseases in collected samples. 

Author Biographies

Michael T Winters, West Virginia Wesleyan College

Student

Melanie S Sal, West Virginia Wesleyan College

Associate Professor

Chair, Department of Biology and Environmental Science

Kimberly A. Bjorgo-Thorne, West Virginia Wesleyan College

Associate professor

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Published

2019-03-20

How to Cite

Winters, M. T., Sal, M. S., & Bjorgo-Thorne, K. A. (2019). Incidence of B. burgdorferi in tick populations of Upshur County, West Virginia. Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science, 91(1). https://doi.org/10.55632/pwvas.v91i1.599

Issue

Vol. 91 No. 1 (2019): 94th Annual Meeting Abstracts

Section

Meeting Abstracts-Oral

License

Proceedings of the West Virginia Academy of Science applies the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license to works we publish. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.