Karen D Mccoy

• MSc., PhD
• Researcher at French National Centre for Scientific Research

Ticks are ectoparasites harboring complex microbial communities, typically dominated by nutritional symbionts that produce B vitamins and sometimes including pathogens affecting human and animal health. However, ticks also host a variety of commensal microbes whose diversity remains poorly documented. In this study, we isolated and identified cultu...

The use of plastics and other anthropogenic debris (AD) as nesting materials by the yellow-legged gull Larus michahellis (YLG) has been previously reported in different north Mediterranean and Atlantic breeding colonies. This behavior is also suspected to widely occur in south-Mediterranean areas, and possibly to a greater extent because of high AD...

New data on the population connectivity of seabirds are required to reduce uncertainty in population viability analyses by the incorporation of metapopulation dynamics. Here, we focus on the Atlantic black-legged kittiwake: a wide-ranging, long-lived seabird. Quantifying kittiwake population connectivity is of particular interest as the total numbe...

A recent study revealed that wing‐harnessed tracking devices negatively affected reproductive success of Great Black‐backed Gulls Larus marinus . To evaluate the generality of this effect in large gulls, we investigated the reproductive performance associated with the same type of GPS‐mounted system in four Mediterranean breeding colonies of the Ye...

Management of Dermanyssus gallinae, a cosmopolitan hematophagous mite responsible for damage in layerpoultry farming, is hampered by a lack of knowledge of its spatio-temporal population dynamics. Previousstudies have shown that the circulation of this pest between farms is of strictly anthropogenic origin, that amitochondrial haplogroup has been e...

Offshore wind developments are expanding across North Atlantic shelf seas. The overarching aim of this project is to improve biological realism in the evaluation of offshore windfarm impacts and to support the application and use of ecosystem science in this new era of offshore marine renewable energy.

The tick Ixodes ricinus is the most important vector species of infectious diseases in European France. Understanding its distribution, phenology, and host species use, along with the distribution and prevalence of associated pathogens at a national scale is essential for developing prevention strategies. The aim of this paper is to provide a syste...

The Coxiellaceae family is composed of five genera showing lifestyles ranging from free-living to symbiosis. Among them, Coxiella burnetii is a well-known pathogen causing Q fever in humans. This bacterium presents both intracellular (parasitic) and environmental (resistant) forms. Recently, several environmental Coxiella genomes have been reported...

The tick Ixodes ricinus is the most important vector species of infectious diseases in European France. Understanding its distribution, phenology, and host species use, along with the distribution and prevalence of associated pathogens at national scales is essential for developing prevention strategies. The aim of this paper is to provide a system...

A bstract Babesia sp. YLG has been recently described in Yellow-legged gull ( Larus michahellis ) chicks and belongs to the Peircei clade in the new classification of Piroplasms. Here, we studied Babesia sp. YLG vectorial transmission by ticks in the simplified environment of a single seabird breeding colony where the Yellow-legged gull is the sole...

The richness and structure of symbiont assemblages are shaped by many factors acting at different spatial and temporal scales. Among them, host phylogeny and geographic distance play essential roles. To explore drivers of richness and structure of symbiont assemblages, feather mites and seabirds are an attractive model due to their peculiar traits....

Background As for other life history traits, variation occurs in movement patterns with important impacts on population demography and community interactions. Individuals can show variation in the extent of seasonal movement (or migration) or can change migratory routes among years. Internal factors, such as age or body condition, may strongly infl...

Climate change is most strongly felt in the polar regions of the world, with significant impacts for the species that live there. The arrival of parasites and pathogens from more temperate areas may become a significant problem for these populations, but current observations of parasite presence often lack a historical reference of prior absence. O...

Gulls can be particularly vulnerable to ingesting plastics when using anthropogenic food sources, with potential consequences for survival and reproductive success. Although birds are known to switch foraging habitats over the breeding season to provide higher quality food for chick provisioning, it is unclear what this means regarding the ingestio...

Background: As for other life history traits, variation occurs in movement patterns with important impacts on population demography and community interactions. Individuals can show variation in the extent of seasonal movement patterns (or migration) or can change migratory routes among years. Internal factors, such as age or body condition, may str...

A bstract The Coxiellaceae family is composed of five genera showing lifestyles ranging from free-living to symbiosis. Among them, Coxiella burnetii is a well-known pathogen causing Q fever in humans. This bacterium presents both intracellular (parasitic) and environmental (resistant) forms. Recently, several environmental Coxiella genomes have bee...

The hydrophobic layer of the arthropod cuticle acts to maintain water balance, but can also serve to transmit chemical signals via cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC), essential mediators of arthropod behavior. CHC signatures typically vary qualitatively among species, but also quantitatively among populations within a species, and have been used as taxon...

Climate change is most strongly felt in the polar regions of the world, with significant impacts for the species that live in these extreme environments. The arrival of parasites and pathogens from more temperate areas may become a significant problem for these populations, but current observations of parasite presence often lack a historical refer...

A bstract The hydrophobic layer of the arthropod cuticle acts to maintain water balance, but can also serve to transmit chemical signals via cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC), essential mediators of arthropod behavior. CHC signatures typically vary qualitatively among species, but also quantitatively among populations within a species, and have been use...

Avian infecting piroplasms are largely under-studied compared to other hemoparasites, and this paucity of information has blurred our phylogenetic and biological comprehension of this important group as a whole. In the present study, we detected and characterized Babesia from yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis) chicks from a colony in southern F...

An ecological community includes all individuals of all species that interact within a single patch or local area of habitat. Understanding the outcome of host–parasite interactions and predicting disease dynamics is particularly challenging at this biological scale because the different component species interact both directly and indirectly in co...

Characterising within-host microbial interactions is essential to understand the drivers that shape these interactions and their consequences for host ecology and evolution. Here, we examined the bacterial microbiota hosted by the seabird soft tick Ornithodoros maritimus (Argasidae) in order to uncover bacterial interactions within ticks and how th...

This book is a collection of 77 expert opinions arranged in three sections. Section 1 on "Climate" sets the scene, including predictions of future climate change, how climate change affects ecosystems, and how to model projections of the spatial distribution of ticks and tick-borne infections under different climate change scenarios. Section 2 on "...

The genus Borrelia consists of evolutionarily and genetically diverse bacterial species that cause a variety of diseases in humans and domestic animals. These vector-borne spirochetes can be classified into two major evolutionary groups, the Lyme borreliosis clade and the relapsing fever clade, both of which have complex transmission cycles during...

Dans le cadre du plan national de prévention et de lutte contre la maladie de Lyme et les maladies transmissibles par les tiques (« Plan Lyme »)1, lancé en 2016, un projet de recherche bibliographique sur l’écologie, la surveillance et la lutte contre les tiques présentes en France métropolitaine et responsables de maladies infectieuses humaines zo...

Functional dispersal (between-site movement, with or without subsequent reproduction) is a key trait acting on the ecological and evolutionary trajectories of a species, with potential cascading effects on other members of the local community. It is often difficult to quantify, and particularly so for small organisms such as parasites. Understandin...

In Europe, ticks are major vectors of both human and livestock pathogens (e.g. Lyme disease, granulocytic anaplasmosis, bovine babesiosis). Agricultural landscapes, where animal breeding is a major activity, constitute a mosaic of habitat types of various quality for tick survival and are used at different frequencies by wild and domestic hosts acr...

Ticks are vectors of infectious diseases of major importance in human and veterinary medicine. For epidemiological studies, accurate identification of ticks is crucial to define their potential role as vectors and to develop control and prevention strategies. Although morphological and molecular methods are widely used to identify ticks, an innovat...

Hard ticks are widely distributed across temperate regions, show strong variation in host associations, and are potential vectors of a diversity of medically important zoonoses, such as Lyme disease. To address unresolved issues with respect to the evolutionary relationships among certain species or genera, we produced novel RNA-Seq data sets for n...

Functional dispersal (between-site movement, with or without subsequent reproduction) is a key trait acting on the ecological and evolutionary trajectories of a species, with potential cascading effects on other members of the local community. It is often difficult to quantify, and particularly so for small organisms such as parasites. Understandin...

Ticks are commonly infected by Coxiella-like endosymbionts (Coxiella-LE) which are thought to supply missing B vitamin nutrients required for blood digestion.While this nutritional symbiosis is essential for the survival and reproduction of infected tick species, our knowledge of where Coxiella-LE is localized in tick tissues is partial at best sin...

The genetic structure of populations of the tick Amblyomma ovale from five distinct areas of the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest was evaluated via DNA sequencing and associated with the presence of domestic dogs acting as hosts at the edge of forest fragments. Ticks were collected from domestic dogs and from the environment between 2015 and 2017. Fou...

Parasites are ubiquitous in the environment, and can cause negative effects in their host species. Importantly, seabirds can be long-lived and cross multiple continents within a single annual cycle, thus their exposure to parasites may be greater than other taxa. With changing climatic conditions expected to influence parasite distribution and abun...

Background: In host-parasite systems, relative dispersal rates condition genetic novelty within populations and thus their adaptive potential. Knowledge of host and parasite dispersal rates can therefore help us to understand current interaction patterns in wild populations and why these patterns shift over time and space. For generalist parasites...

1. Introduction 2. The need for tick genome resources 3. Data-driven solutions for tick and tick-borne disease control 3.1. The systems biology of tick-host-pathogen interactions 3.2. The link between tick genetics, vector competence and disease transmission 3.3. Genetic frameworks for Ixodes control 4. The Ix1000G roadmap 4.1. Priority area 1: Hig...

Feather mites are useful models for studying speciation due to their high diversity and strong degree of host specialization. However, studies to date have focused on the evolution of higher-level mite taxa while much hidden diversity likely occurs at the level of host genera and species. In this study, we examined the diversity and evolution of fe...

Capture‐Recapture (CR) approaches are extensively used to estimate demographic parameters. Their robustness relies on the selection of suitable statistical models, but also on the sampling design and effort deployed in the field. In colonial or territorial species showing breeding site fidelity, recurrent local perturbations, such as predation‐indu...

Background When colonization and gene flow depend on host-mediated dispersal, a key factor affecting vector dispersal potential is the time spent on the host for the blood meal, a characteristic that can vary strongly among life history stages. Using a 2-patch vector-pathogen population model and seabird ticks as biological examples, we explore how...

Anaplasma phagocytophilum is a bacterial pathogen mainly transmitted by Ixodes ricinus ticks in Europe. It infects wild mammals, livestock, and, occasionally, humans. Roe deer are considered to be the major reservoir, but the genotypes they carry differ from those that are found in livestock and humans. Here, we investigated whether roe deer were t...

Background Gene duplication has led to a most remarkable adaptation involved in vertebrates’ host-pathogen arms-race, the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). However, MHC duplication history is as yet poorly understood in non-mammalian vertebrates, including birds. Results Here, we provide evidence for the evolution of two ancient avian MHC cl...

The epidemiology of vector-borne zoonoses depends on the movement of both hosts and vectors, which can differ greatly in intensity across spatial scales. Because of their life history traits and small size, vector dispersal may be frequent, but limited in distance. However, little information is available on vector movement patterns at local spatia...

Ecological specialization to restricted diet-niches is driven by obligate, and often maternally inherited, symbionts in many arthropod lineages. These heritable symbionts typically form evolutionarily stable associations with arthropods that can last for millions of years. Ticks were recently found to harbor such an obligate symbiont, Coxiella-LE,...

Anaplasma phagocytophilum is a bacterium transmitted mainly by Ixodes ricinus ticks in Europe , which infect many wild, domestic mammals and human. The prevalence of this pathogen often exceed 80% in roe deer populations, suggesting that these hosts have a major role in the circulation of A. phagocytophilum in ticks. Here, we investigated the degre...

Host specific adaptations in parasites can lead to the divergence of conspecific populations. However, this divergence can be difficult to measure because morphological changes may not be expressed or because obvious changes may simply reflect phenotypic plasticity. Combining both genetic and phenotypic information can enable a better understanding...

Spatial disease ecology is emerging as a new field that requires the integration of complementary approaches to address how the distribution and movements of hosts and parasites may condition the dynamics of their interactions. In this context, migration, the seasonal movement of animals to different zones of their distribution, is assumed to play...

Anaplasma phagocytophilum is an emerging zoonotic tick-borne pathogen affecting a wide range of mammals. Rodents are suspected to be natural reservoirs for this bacterium, but their role in the epidemiologic cycles affecting domestic animals and wild ungulates has not been demonstrated. This study aimed to improve our knowledge on A. phagocytophilu...

Obligate intracellular bacteria of the Rickettsiella genus are emerging as both widespread and biologically diverse in arthropods. Some Rickettsiella strains are highly virulent entomopathogenic agents, whereas others are maternally inherited endosymbionts exerting very subtle manipulations on host phenotype to promote their own spread. Recently, a...

Host range is a key element of a parasite's ecology and evolution and can vary greatly depending on spatial scale. Generalist parasites frequently show local population structure in relation to alternative sympatric hosts (i.e. host races), and may thus be specialists at local scales. Here, we investigated local population specialization of a commo...

Understanding traits influencing the distribution of genetic diversity has major ecological and evolutionary implications for host–parasite interactions. The genetic structure of parasites is expected to conform to that of their hosts, because host dispersal is generally assumed to drive parasite dispersal. Here, we used a meta-analysis to test thi...

According to classic niche theory, species can coexist in heterogeneous environments by reducing interspecific competition via niche partitioning, e.g. trophic or spatial partitioning. However, support for the role of competition on niche partitioning remains controversial. Here, we tested for spatial and trophic partitioning in feather mites, a di...

Background: Reliable information on host use by arthropod vectors is required to study pathogen transmission ecology and to predict disease risk. Direct observation of host use is often difficult or impossible and indirect methods are therefore necessary. However, the reliability of currently available methods to identify the last host of blood-fe...

Q fever is a highly infectious disease with a worldwide distribution. Its causative agent, the intracellular bacterium Coxiella burnetii, infects a variety of vertebrate species, including humans. Its evolutionary origin remains almost entirely unknown and uncertainty persists regarding the identity and lifestyle of its ancestors. A few tick specie...

Présentes dans tous les écosystèmes depuis des centaines de millions d'années, les tiques sont parmi les plus anciens arthropodes apparus sur Terre, exploitant leurs hôtes bien avant l'apparition de l'homme. Hématophages, elles sont responsables chez leurs hôtes d'une grande diversité de maladies, que ce soit par spoliation sanguine ou par transmis...