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Abstract
The tick species Ixodes uriae, parasitizing seabirds in the Arctic, may transmit many pathogens including various arboviruses, Borrelia spirochetes and Babesia apicomplexans. These pathogens may pose an important additional stress to seabirds, which are already stressed by environmental changes such as pollutants and decreased food availability. Here, we present the results of the first screening for arboviruses of the genera Flavivirus, Alphavirus, Orthobunyavirus, Phlebovirus and Orbivirus, as well as Borrelia spirochetes and Babesia apicomplexans from Svalbard and Jan Mayen. Using polymerase chain reaction technology with genus-specific primers, we tested 89 ticks collected on Jan Mayen, Bjørnøya and Spitsbergen between 2008 and 2012. We did not detect any of the screened tick-borne pathogens. Nevertheless, these pathogens may be introduced to Svalbard and Jan Mayen by migratory birds in the near future. The increasing numbers of ticks appearing in the studied areas make this introduction even more likely. Such an introduction would have serious impact on seabird ecology as well as on human public health. Therefore, continuous careful surveillance and monitoring of possible tick-borne pathogen introductions is important.
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Acknowledgements
We express our thanks to Dr Pavlína Věchtová for providing us PCR primers complementary to tick EF1-alpha and actin and to Drs Lesley Bell-Sakyi and Daniel Růžek for helping us select suitable primers of positive controls. Our thanks belong also to whole team at the Centre of Polar Ecology at the Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, for their help and support during the fieldwork, especially to Drs Josef Elster and Oleg Ditrich for the opportunity to participate in the fieldwork in Svalbard and Jan Kavan, MSc and Alexandra Bernardová, MSc, for logistic support. JC is a postdoctoral fellow supported by the project Postdok-BIOGLOBE (CZ.1.07/2.3.00/30.0032), co-financed by the European Social Fund and state budget of the Czech Republic; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic (project LO1218) under the NPU I programme. The sampling in Jan Mayen, Bjørnøya and Spitsbergen was supported by the Czech Ministry of Education under the programme called Czech Polar Stations: Construction and Logistic Expenses (LM2010009 CzechPolar; project reg. no. CZ.1.07/2.2.00/28.0190)” funded by the European Social Fund and from the government budget of the Czech Republic, and by the project called Creating of Working Team and Pedagogical Conditions for Teaching and Education in the Field of Polar Ecology and Life in Extreme Environment (CZ.1.07/2.2.00/28.0190) and by the Norwegian programme Seabird Populations. The laboratory analyses were supported by the Czech Science Foundation (P502/11/2116, 14-29256S, P302/12/2490 and 13-12816P); the Grant Agency of the University of South Bohemia (155/2013/P); the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (Z60220518 and LO1218); the Anticipating the Global Onset of Novel Epidemics programme (278976); the AdmireVet project (ED006/01/01). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Notes
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