English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Background  Fossil ticks are extremely rare and  Ixodes succineus  Weidner, 1964 from Eocene (ca. 44–49 Ma) Baltic amber is one of the oldest examples of a living hard tick genus (Ixodida: Ixodidae). Previous work suggested it was most closely related to the modern and widespread European sheep tick  Ixodes ricinus  (Linneaus, 1758).    Results  Restudy using phase contrast synchrotron x-ray tomography yielded images of exceptional quality. These confirm the fossil’s referral to  Ixodes  Latreille, 1795, but the characters resolved here suggest instead affinities with the Asian subgenus  Partipalpiger  Hoogstraal et al., 1973 and its single living (and medically significant) species  Ixodes ovatus  Neumann, 1899. We redescribe the amber fossil here as  Ixodes  ( Partipalpiger )  succineus .    Conclusions  Our data suggest that  Ixodes ricinus  is unlikely to be directly derived from Weidner’s amber species, but instead reveals that the  Partipalpiger  lineage was originally more widely distributed across the northern hemisphere. The closeness of  Ixodes  ( P. )  succineus  to a living vector of a wide range of pathogens offers the potential to correlate its spatial and temporal position (northern Europe, nearly 50 million years ago) with the estimated origination dates of various tick-borne diseases.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0777-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Microtomography of the Baltic amber tick Ixodes succineus reveals affinities with the modern Asian disease vector Ixodes ovatus