Phylogeographic Analysis of Tick-borne Pathogen - Recent Advances and Issues in Environmental Science - page 90

CONCLUSION
The results reported herein provided the first evidence that the evolution of A. marginale
MSP1a repeat and microsatellite sequences was linked to environmental traits, and
that strains are not geographically related. Different evolutionary pressures acting on
A. marginale were found associated with zones where climate and rainfall affect pres-
ence, abundance and dynamics of vector populations. We hypothesized that some A.
marginale strains evolved under conditions of pathogen biological transmission by
R. microplus , while others may be linked to transmission by other tick species or to
mechanical transmission in regions where R. microplus is currently absent. The pro-
cedures outlined herein could be fundamental toward studying the evolution of other
vector-borne pathogens.

KEYWORDS

• Ecoregion

• Mechanical transmission

• Microsatellite

• Phylogeographic

AUTHORS' CONTRIBUTIONS
Agustín Estrada-Peña, José de la Fuente and Atilio J. Mangold conceived and de-
signed the study and conducted MSP1a repeat sequence analysis. Agustín Estrada-Peña
conducted ecoregion analysis and clustering. Victoria Naranjo, Karina Acevedo-
Whitehouse, and José de la Fuente conducted MSP1a expression and microsatellite
sequence analyses. Agustín Estrada-Peña, Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, Katherine M.
Kocan, and José de la Fuente contributed to drafting the manuscript. All authors read
and approved the final manuscript.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by grants from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación,
Spain (project BFU2008-01244/BMC), the CSIC intramural project 200830I249 to
José de la Fuente and the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station (project 1669)
and was facilitated through the Integrated Consortium on Ticks and Tick-borne Dis-
eases (ICTTD-3), financed by the International Cooperation Program of the European
Union, coordination action project No. 510561. VN was funded by the European
Social Fund and the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha (Program FSE
2007-2013), Spain.