Italian ticks (Acarina, Ixodida): development of multiaccess key to species and updated Atlas of diversity, distribution and host range from Lazio.

In recent years the scientific community has shown increasing interest in studying ticks, Ixodida, due to the growing recognition of their role as vectors of serious diseases, their expanding geographic range driven by climate change, and the need for better tick control and disease prevention strategies. The main objective of this study are the realization of an atlas of tick diversity of Latium region and the development of more comprehensive taxonomic identification keys for Italian tick species. For the first two years of this PhD, we sampled 23 sites and 3 CRAS facilities across Latium, from April to October ca twice a week. The sampling activity consisted in selecting ecotonal areas among meadows and woods attended by both wild animals and livestock. Field sampling was carried out using a white wool cloth (70x150 cm) mounted on a cane. This tool is intended to collect ticks as they are “questing” on vegetation, ready for a vertebrate host to walk past them. It was dragged both on herbaceous vegetation (dragging method) and on shrub vegetation (flagging method), collected tick specimen were put in 70% Ethanol. A total of 400 specimens were collected (208 in 2022 and 192 in 2023), belonging to 5 genera, and 9 species: Dermacentor marginatus, Hyalomma detritum, Hy. marginatum, Haemaphysalis punctata, Hae. Inermis, Rhipicephalus bursa, Rh. sanguineus, Rh. turanicus, Ixodes ricinus. Moreover, during the PhD a collaboration as entomological operational unit in the framework of the project “Emerging and re-emerging zoonoses along the routes of migratory birds. An integrated approach to analyze the potential pathways of introduction and spread” (IZS AM 04/19 RC), of the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell'Abruzzo e del Molise "G. Caporale" (IZSAM), funded by the Italian Ministry of Health. The activities were set with the Istituto Superiore di Sanità for the identification of ticks collected from migratory birds. The fieldwork was carried out during the spring migration period, from March to May during bird-ringing activities on Ventotene Island, from 2019 to 2023. For the creation of the atlas, literature georeferenced records for ticks were collected for a total of 4.117 records, that were mapped using QGIS. For the multiaccess identification key, it was built using the Lucid4 builder software, distributed by Lucid Central (LucidCentral.org, Queensland, Australia). The characters state for the key were reevaluated and rearranged on the base of the dichotomous keys by Manilla 1998 and Iori et al., 2005. In the case of ticks, every species of hard tick includes four “entities” (larva, nymph, adult female and adult male) while soft ticks only include three as males and females cannot be morphologically distinguished. This led to the creation of four, for the former, and three, for the latter, different matrices of characters and character state for the Italian species. Ultimately, the matrix includes 69 features with 174 character states for 102 entities.