,This study produced reference quality genomes of two cattle ticks Rhipicephalus microplus and Rhipicephalus annulatus, which can be used to identify drug targets with acaricidal activity and refine anti-tick vaccine approaches.,,

,The longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, feeds upon a wide range of bird and mammalian hosts. Mammalian hosts include cattle, deer, sheep, goats, humans, and horses. This tick is known to transmit a number of pathogens causing tick-borne diseases, and was the vector of a recent serious outbreak of oriental theileriosis in New Zealand. A New Zealand-USA consortium was established to sequence, assemble, and annotate the genome of this tick, using ticks obtained from New Zealand's North Island. In New Zealand, the tick is considered exclusively parthenogenetic and this trait was deemed useful for genome assembly. Very high molecular weight genomic DNA was sequenced on the Illumina HiSeq4000 and the long-read Pac Bio Sequel platforms. Twenty-eight SMRT cells produced a total of 21.3 million reads which were assembled with Canu on a reserved supercomputer node with access to 12 TB of RAM, running continuously for over 24 days. The final assembly dataset consisted of 34,211 contigs with an average contig length of 215,205 bp. The quality of the annotated genome was assessed by BUSCO analysis, an approach that provides quantitative measures for the quality of an assembled genome. Over 95% of the BUSCO gene set was found in the assembled genome. Only 48 of the 1066 BUSCO genes were missing and only 9 were present in a fragmented condition. The raw sequencing reads and the assembled contigs/scaffolds are archived at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.,Funded by USDA-ARS Knipling-Bushland US Livestock Insects Research Laboratory CRIS project 3094-32000-036-00,,

Real-time quaking induced conversion assay data from artificial membrane feeding assays of ticks and of engorged tick, ear tissue and lymph node samples from hunter harvested white-tailed deer heads from Wisconsin that were harvested during the 2021 hunting season.

,Deer keds are blood-feeding flies from which several human and animal pathogens have been detected, including the causative agent of Lyme Disease (Borrelia burgdorferi). Cervids, which are the primary hosts of deer keds, are not natural reservoirs of B. burgdorferi, and it has been suggested that deer keds may acquire bacterial pathogens by co-feeding near ticks that are infected with the bacteria. We tested this hypothesis by using a molecular assay to screen for presence of Anaplasma spp., Bartonella spp., Borrelia spp., and Rickettsia spp. in specimens of European deer keds (n=306) and blacklegged ticks (n=315) collected from 38 individual white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania. There was limited similarity in the bacterial DNA detected between these ectoparasites per host, suggesting that co-feeding may not be a mechanism by which deer keds acquire these bacteria. We discuss these results in relation to deer ked feeding biology, life history, and collection timepoints. In addition, we screened specimens of European deer keds (n=410), Neotropical deer keds (n=13), Western American deer keds (n=10), and Pacific deer keds (n=14) for these same bacterial pathogens.,,

,,[NOTE - 11/24/2021: this dataset supersedes an earlier version https://doi.org/10.15482/USDA.ADC/1518654 ],Resources in this dataset:,,

,The horn fly, Haematobia irritans irritans (Linnaeus, 1758; Diptera: Muscidae), a hematophagous external parasite of cattle, causes considerable economic losses to the livestock industry worldwide. This pest is mainly controlled with insecticides; however, horn fly populations from several countries have developed resistance to many of the products available for their control. In an attempt to better understand the adult horn fly and the development of resistance in natural populations, we used an Illumina paired-end read HiSeq and GAII approach to determine the transcriptomes of untreated control adult females, untreated control adult males, permethrin-treated surviving adult males and permethrin + piperonyl butoxide-treated killed adult males from a Louisiana population of horn flies with a moderate level of pyrethroid resistance. A total of 128,769,829, 127,276,458, 67,653,920, and 64,270,124 quality-filtered Illumina reads were obtained for untreated control adult females, untreated control adult males, permethrin-treated surviving adult males and permethrin + piperonyl butoxide-treated killed adult males, respectively. The de novo assemblies using CLC Genomics Workbench 8.0.1 yielded 15,699, 11,961, 2672, 7278 contigs (≥ 200 nt) for untreated control adult females, untreated control adult males, permethrin-treated surviving adult males and permethrin + piperonyl butoxide-treated killed adult males, respectively. More than 56% of the assembled contigs of each data set had significant hits in the BlastX (UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot database) (E <0.001). The number of contigs in each data set with InterProScan, GO mapping, Enzyme codes and KEGG pathway annotations were: Untreated Control Adult Females – 10,331, 8770, 2963, 2183; Untreated control adult males – 8392, 7056, 2449, 1765; Permethrin-treated surviving adult males – 1992, 1609, 641, 495; Permethrin + PBO-treated killed adult males – 5561, 4463, 1628, 1211.,Data is with this article and also available at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Short Read Archive (SRA) through the direct link https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/SRP131897 or through SRA accession number SRP131897. The adult horn fly transcriptome Shotgun Assembly project has been deposited at DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank under the accession GGLM00000000. The version described in this paper is the first version, GGLM01000000. The overall BioProject ID is PRJNA429442 and the BioSample accessions are SAMN08355023, SAMN08355024, SAMN08355025, and SAMN08355026.,,

,The bacterial 16S tag-encoded FLX-titanium amplicon pyrosequencing (bTEFAP) method was used to carry out the classification analysis of bacterial flora in adult female and male horn flies and horn fly eggs.,The bTEFAP method identified 16S rDNA sequences in our samples which allowed the identification of various prokaryotic taxa associated with the life stage examined. This is the first comprehensive report of bacterial flora associated with the horn fly using a culture-independent method. Several rumen, environmental, symbiotic and pathogenic bacteria associated with the horn fly were identified and quantified. This is the first report of the presence of Wolbachia in horn flies of USA origin and is the first report of the presence of Rikenella in an obligatory blood feeding insect.,Adult horn flies were collected on a single date from pastured cattle at the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, St. Gabriel Research Station using aerial nets. Within 1 h after collection the flies were transferred to large sterile Erlenmeyer flasks and maintained in total darkness for 1.5 h and 30°C to allow flies to oviposit on the flask bottom [73]. Adult flies were released from the flasks into a cage and eggs were collected by rinsing with distilled water onto a filter paper. Both the eggs and adult flies were frozen at −80°C. To preserve nucleic acid integrity, adults were sexed on dry ice prior to freezing. Each sample used for DNA extraction and pyrosequencing consisted of 5 adult males, 5 adult females or 50 eggs pooled together and homogenized. Three replicates of adult male, adult female and eggs were analyzed.,The horn fly, Haematobia irritans, is one of the most economically important pests of cattle. Insecticides have been a major element of horn fly management programs. Growing concerns with insecticide resistance, insecticide residues on farm products, and non-availability of new generation insecticides, are serious issues for the livestock industry. Alternative horn fly control methods offer the promise to decrease the use of insecticides and reduce the amount of insecticide residues on livestock products and give an impetus to the organic livestock farming segment. The horn fly, an obligatory blood feeder, requires the help of microflora to supply additional nutrients and metabolize the blood meal. Recent advancements in DNA sequencing methodologies enable researchers to examine the microflora diversity independent of culture methods.,,