Iksodinių erkių ir Laimo ligos sukėlėjų - borelijų įvairovė ir paplitimas

Abstract

Ticks are blood feeding wide group of arthropods of utmost medical, epidemiological and veterinary signiicance throughout the world. They are obligatory external parasites for every class of vertebrate and may bite people. Ticks have been described as vectors of diseases, including bacterial, viral and protozoan zoonoses. Differences among pathogenic organisms are determined by different natural conditions, inluencing prevalence and biodiversity of main vectors and reservoir hosts. Vector-borne infectious agents often have geographical variation in their ecology, prevalence, and virulence due to differences in hosts or vectors, biotic and abiotic (climatic) inluences on the ecology, and heritable determinants of the disease agent’s virulence. The study of tick ecology and their endoparasites should comprise three levels pathogen-vector-reservoir interactions for understanding the epidemiology of infection diseases. A molecular-based method has been successfully introduced into ecological research of a parasite-host system.