An invasive mammal (grey squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis) commonly hosts diverse and atypical genotypes of the zoonotic pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato.

Supplemental material

  • Supplemental file 1 -

    Plot of rarefaction curves for Borrelia garinii clpA allelic richness for questing Ixodes ricinus ticks sampled in continental Europe, England, and Scotland and gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) from Scotland and northern England (Fig. S1); maximum-likelihood (ML) phylogeny of ospC alleles from B. garinii-infected gray squirrels (S. carolinensis)from Scotland and questing ticks (I. ricinus) from this study and from I. ricinus ticks sampled in a separate, unpublished study from Scotland (Fig. S2); ML phylogeny of ospC alleles from Borrelia afzelli-infected gray squirrels (S. carolinensis) from Scotland in this study and from questing ticks (I. ricinus) sampled from Scotland in a separate, unpublished study (Fig. S3); map of gray squirrel (S. carolinensis) sampling sites in Scotland and northern England (Fig. S4); positions of test sites in the 5S-23S Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato intergenic spacer region used to discriminate between genospecies (Fig. S5); testing for phylogenetic clustering of B. garinii ospC (Table S1) alleles by host species in which the allele was detected, using three test statistics (Table S1); testing for phylogenetic clustering of B. afzelli clpA alleles by the host species in which the allele was detected (Table S2) and by the region where the gray squirrel was trapped (Table S3), using three test statistics; and testing for phylogenetic clustering of B. afzelli ospC alleles by sampled, using three test statistics (Table S4).

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