Tick-borne pathogens in the blood of wild and domestic ungulates in South Africa: Interplay of game and livestock
We screened for tick-borne pathogens blood samples from 181 wild and domestic ungulates belonging to 18 host species in 4 South African Provinces. Polymerase chain reaction followed by reverse line blotting and sequencing allowed detecting 16 tick-borne pathogen species belonging to the genera Babesia, Theileria, Anaplasma, and Ehrlichia. Ten pathogen species were involved in 29 new host–pathogen combinations. Most infections (77.9%) involved more than one pathogen species. Principal component analysis (PCA) assigned the 163 infections, identified to species level, to