Abstract
Scabies is a common parasitic disease in many mammalian species, caused by the infestation of Sarcoptes scabiei. There is no consistent conclusion on whether Sarcoptes mites from different hosts or geographic locations have apparent genetic divergence. In this study, we collected and morphologically identified S. scabiei from Chinese serow and goral, and we described the genetic diversity of S. scabiei and other mites based on phylogenetic analyses of the ITS2 and cox1 sequence fragments, including data available in GenBank. The mites isolated from Chinese serow and goral were S. scabiei, and they were morphologically similar. The phylogenetic trees and haplotype networks showed that S. scabiei from other locations worldwide did not cluster according to host divergence or geographical distribution. Additionally, the Fst values were − 0.224 to 0.136 and − 0.045 to 1 between S. scabiei from different hosts, including humans and domestic and wild animals, based on partial ITS and cox1 sequences. Worldwide S. scabiei samples formed three clusters (with H2, H5, and H12 at their centers) in the ITS and one cluster (with C9 at the center) in the cox1 haplotype phylogenetic network. The S. scabiei collected from Chinese serow and goral were morphologically similar and had the same genotype. A study on the genetic characteristics of S. scabiei from Chinese serow and goral together with other mites from different hosts and geographic locations around the world showed no obvious divergence. These findings indicated that scabies likely is a zoonotic disease and that the global prevalence of scabies is probably related to the worldwide trade of domestic animals.
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Data availability
Representative nucleotide sequences obtained in this study were submitted to the GenBank under the accession numbers ON126466, ON126467, ON989785, and ON993770.
Code availability
Not applicable.
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This study was supported by the grants of the Surveillance of Wildlife Diseases from the State Forestry Administration of China (2019076017).
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Mengchao Zhou: carried the experiment, data analysis, manuscript write and review. Peng Peng: data analysis, samples gathering. Xiaotian Zhang: data analysis, samples gathering. Shakeel Hussain: manuscript write and review. Yaxian Lu: carried the experiment. Lei Han: data analysis. Denghui Chen: carried the experiment. Hongjia Li: data analysis. Quan Liu: project conceptualization and experimental design. Lihong Tian: project conceptualization and experimental design. Heting Sun: project conceptualization and experimental design. Zhijun Hou: project conceptualization, experimental design, manuscript write and review. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
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We declare that the Chinese serow and goral samples used in this current work died of natural causes or by accidental circumstances and were collected by local Baima Snow Mountains government agents. There is no conflict of interest with species conservation guidelines. The collection of the worms from the Chinese serow was approved by the local Yunnan government agents. All experimental designs and animal handling were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Northeast Forestry University (2022WVH03).
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Zhou, M., Peng, P., Zhang, X. et al. The genetic characteristics of Sarcoptes scabiei from Chinese serow (Capricornis milneedwardsii) and goral (Naemorhedus goral arnouxianus) compared with other mites from different hosts and geographic locations using ITS2 and cox1 sequences. Parasitol Res 121, 3611–3618 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-022-07686-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-022-07686-2