A total of 36,912 questing ticks of the genus Haemaphysalis were collected from 149 sites (Table 1). The distribution of ticks was as follows: 12,869 from Jeonnam, 5,899 from Jeonbuk, 10,584 from Chungnam, and 8,560 from Chungbuk provinces. Among these, larvae represented the highest proportion among the three developmental stages (19,980 ticks, 54.1%), while adults made up the lowest (1,434 ticks, 3.9%). However, species identification of larvae was not recorded due to the morphological indistinguishability between the larval stages of H. longicornis and H. flava.
Nymph and adult stages of H. longicornis (13,082 ticks, 35.4%) and H. flava (3,850 ticks, 10.4%) were collected from all four provinces, with H. longicornis being the dominant species. The occurrence of H. longicornis nymphs and adults was primarily observed from April to July, with peak occurrences in May for nymphs and July for adults, respectively. In contrast, the occurrence of H. flava nymphs and adults was observed from March to June, with peak occurrence in March for both nymphs and adults (Additional file 1: Table S1).
Table 1. Number of Haemaphysalis tick species collected from the study area
The monthly occurrence of Haemaphysalis ticks by developmental stages from March to October is illustrated in Fig. 2, with a detailed breakdown presented in Additional file 1: Table S1. From March to July, the nymphal stage dominated the study areas, with 94.9% of the nymphal ticks collected during this period, peaking in April. Conversely, the larval stage was predominantly collected from July to October, accounting for 92.9% of the larvae collected during these months, with the highest peak observed in September. The collection of adult stages was comparatively low (1,434 ticks, 3.9%) compared to the larval (19,980 ticks, 54.1%) and nymphal (15,498 ticks, 42.0%) stages, with the highest number of adults collected in July (451 ticks, 1.3%).
Of the ticks collected, approximately one-third (13,118 ticks, 35.5%) underwent PCR analysis to detect Anaplasma infection. They were pooled into 939 groups, which were then subjected to PCR analysis followed by sequencing for species identification and phylogenetic analysis. Out of the 939 pools of ticks, 24 pools (2.6%) tested positive for Anaplasma. The larval stage exhibited the highest number of Anaplasma-positive pools (16 pools, 1.7%), followed by the nymphal (7 pools, 0.7%) and adult (1 pool, 0.1%) stages (Table 2).
Anaplasma-positive pools were found in the nymphal and adult stages of H. longicornis, but none of the H. flava pools contained Anaplasma-specific DNA. The minimum infection rate (MIR) of Anaplasma from the 13,118 ticks was calculated to be 0.183%. High numbers of Anaplasma-positive pools were observed in Chungnam and Chungbuk provinces, each with 9 positive pools, while Jeonnam and Jeonbuk provinces had 5 and 1 positive pools, respectively.
The monthly occurrence of Anaplasma-positive pools is depicted in Fig. 3. The pattern of Anaplasma-positive pools coincided with the monthly occurrence of Haemaphysalis tick stages. Positive pools in the nymphal stage were found from April to July, while Anaplasma-positive larval pools were observed from August to October. One positive pool in the adult stage was found in July, coinciding with the peak occurrence of adult ticks. The highest peak occurrence of Anaplasma-positive pools was observed in September, which corresponded with the peak in larval tick activity.
Table 2 Souce of Anaplasma-positive tick pools of Haemaphysalis spp. in Korea
1 MIR, minimum infection rate (number of positive pools of ticks / total number of ticks tested × 100); 2 MIR within each developmental stage of tick
Phylogenetic analysis of the PCR-positive pools for Anaplasma spp. revealed that 21 of the 24 Anaplasma-positive pools contained A. phagocytophilum-specific gene, while the remaining 2 and 1 were identified as A. bovis and Anaplasma sp., respectively (Fig. 4). The two A. bovis sequences were found in a pool of H. longicornis nymphs collected in Sejong-si in June and in an adult male tick collected in Chungnam province in July. Sixteen A. phagocytophilum-positive pools were identified from larval ticks, while six positive pools were from nymphs.
The mean divergence between the sixteen sequences of A. phagocytophilum from the larval stage was 0.0021 ± 0.0048 (Mean ± SD, Max 0.0207, Additional file 1: Table S2). Twenty-one sequences of A. phagocytophilum identified in this study, including all 16 sequences from larval ticks, were grouped together (Fig. 4). The mean divergence of the 24 A. phagocytophilum sequences compared to A. phagocytophilum identified from a Korean water deer was 0.0033 ± 0.0077. Therefore, A. phagocytophilum identified from the 16 larval pools of Haemaphysalis ticks appeared to be highly similar. The 16 larval pools of A. phagocytophilum originated from all four provinces investigated in this study: 5 from Jeonnam, 1 from Jeonbuk, 4 from Chungnam, and 6 from Chungbuk.
Representative sequences obtained from this study and used in the phylogenetic analysis were submitted to the GenBank database (accession numbers: PP663778–PP663807).