Altschul SF, Gish W, Miller W, Myers EW, Lipman DJ (1990) Basic local alignment search tool. J Mol Biol 215: 403–410
Álvarez-Fernández A, Breitschwerdt EB, Solano-Gallego L (2018) Bartonella infections in cats and dogs including zoonotic aspects. Parasit Vectors. 11:624.
Baud D, Greub G (2011) Intracellular bacteria and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Clinical 240 Microbiol and Infection 17: 1312–1322.
Beninati T, Lo N, Noda H, Esposito F, Rizzoli A, Favia G, Genchi C (2002). First detection of spotted fever group rickettsiae in Ixodes ricinus from Italy. Emerg. Infect Dis 8: 983–986.
Capelli G, Ravagnan S, Montarsi F, Ciocchetta S, Cazzin S, Porcellato E, Babiker AM, Cassini R, Salviato A, Cattoli G, Otranto D (2012) Occurrence and identification of risk areas of Ixodes ricinus-borne pathogens: a cost-effectiveness analysis in north-eastern Italy. Parasit Vectors 5:61.
Chisu V, Alberti A, Zobba R, Foxi C, Masala G (2019) Molecular characterization and phylogenetic analysis of Babesia and Theileria spp. in ticks from domestic and wild hosts in Sardinia. Acta Trop 196:60–65
Chisu V, Foxi C, Mannu R, Satta G, Masala G (2018a) A five-year survey of tick species and identification of tick-borne bacteria in Sardinia, Italy. Ticks Tick Borne Dis 9:678–681.
Chisu V, Foxi C, Tanda A, Masala G (2018b) Molecular evidence of Chlamydiales in ticks from wild and domestic hosts in Sardinia, Italy. Parasitol Res 117:981–987.
Dantas-Torres F, Chomel BB, Otranto D (2012) Ticks and tick-borne diseases: a One Health perspective. Trends Parasitol 28:437–446.
Ebani VV, Bertelloni F, Turchi B, Filogari D, Cerri D (2015) Molecular survey of tick-borne pathogens in Ixodid ticks collected from hunted wild animals in Tuscany, Italy. Asian Pac J Trop Med 8:714–717
Ebani VV, Rocchigiani G, Bertelloni F, Nardoni S, Leoni A, Nicoloso S, Mancianti F. Molecular survey on the presence of zoonotic arthropod-borne pathogens in wild red deer (Cervus elaphus). Comp Immunol Microbiol Infect Dis (2016) 47:77–80.
Essig A, Longbottom D (2015) Chlamydia abortus: new aspects of infectious abortion in sheep 279 and potential risk for pregnant women. Curr Clin Microbiol Rpt 2:22–34
Felsenstein J (1985) Confidence limits on phylogenies: an approach using the bootstrap. Evol 39: 783–791.
Floris R, Yurtman AN, Margoni EF, Mignozzi K, Boemo B, Altobelli A, Cinco M (2008) Detection and identification of Rickettsia species in the northeast of Italy.Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis 8:777–782.
Fournier PE, Allombert C, Supputamongkol Y, Caruso G, Brouqui P, Raoult D (2004) Aneruptive fever associated with antibodies to Rickettsia helvetica in Europe and Thailand. J Clin Microbiol 42: 816–818.
Genchi C, Manfredi MT1999)Tick species infesting ruminants in Italy: ecological and bio-climatic factors affecting the different regional distribution. Parassitologia. 41:41–45.
Hall TA (1999) BioEdit: a user-friendly biological sequence alignment editor and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT Nucleic Acids Symp Ser (Oxford) 41:95–98.
Jaenson TG, Eisen L, Comstedt P, Mejlon HA, Lindgren E, Bergström S, Olsen B (2009) Risk indicators for the tick Ixodes ricinus and Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato in Sweden. Med Vet Entomol 23:226–237.
Kimura M (1980). A simple method for estimating evolutionary rate of base substitutions through comparative studies of nucleotide sequences. J Mol Evol16:111–120.
Larkin MA, Blackshields G, Brown NP, Chenna R, McGettigan PA, McWilliam H, Valentin F, Wallace IM, Wilm A, Lopez R, Thompson JD, Gibson TJ, Higgins DG (2007) Clustal W and Clustal X version 2.0. Bioinformatics 23: 2947–2948.
Maioli G, Pistone D, Bonilauri P, Pajoro M, Barbieri I, Mulatto P, Vicari N, Dottori M (2012) Etiological agents of rickettsiosis and anaplasmosis in ticks collected in Emilia-Romagna region (Italy) during 2008 and 2009. Exp Appl Acarol 57:199–208.
Mancini F, Ciccozzi M, Lo Presti A, Cella E, Giovanetti M, Di Luca M, Toma L, Bianchi R, Khoury C, Rezza G, Ciervo A (2015) Characterization of spotted fever group Rickettsiae in ticks from a city park of Rome, Italy. Ann Ist Super Sanità 51: 284–290.
Manilla G (1998) Acari Ixodidae, Fauna d’Italia. E Dizioni Calderini, Bologna Medlock JM, Hansford KM, Bormane A, Derdakova M, Estrada-Peña A, George J-C, et al. (2013) Driving forces for changes in geographical distribution of Ixodes ricinus ticks in Europe. Parasit Vectors 6:1.
Opota O, Jaton K, Branley J, Vanrompay D, Erard V, Borel N, Longbottom D, Greub G (2015) Improving the molecular diagnosis of Chlamydia psittaci and Chlamydia abortus infection with a species-specific duplex real-time PCR. J Med Microbiol 64: 1174–1185.
Otranto D, Dantas-Torres F, Giannelli A, Latrofa MS, Cascio A, Cazzin S, Ravagnan S, Montarsi F, Zanzani SA, Manfredi MT, Capelli G (2014) Ticks infesting humans in Italy and associated pathogens. Parasit Vectors 14:328.
Portillo A, Santibáñez S, García-Álvarez L, Palomar AM, Oteo JA (2015) Rickettsioses in Europe. Microbes Infect 17:834–838.
Regier Y, Ballhorn W, Kempf VA (2017) Molecular detection of Bartonella henselae in Ixodes ricinus ticks extracted from a single cat. Parasit Vectors 10:105.
Sanogo YO, Zeaiter Z, Caruso G, Merola F, Shpynov S, Brouqui P, Raoult D (2003) Bartonella henselae in Ixodes ricinus ticks (Acari: Ixodida) removed from humans, Belluno province, Italy. Emerg Infect Dis 9: 329–332.
Scarpulla M, Barlozzari G, Salvato L, De Liberato C, Lorenzetti R, Macrì G (2018) Rickettsia helvetica in Human-Parasitizing and Free-Living Ixodes ricinus from Urban and Wild Green Areas in the Metropolitan City of Rome, Italy. Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis 18:404–407.
Skotarczak B (2018) The role of companion animals in the environmental circulation of tick-borne bacterial pathogens. Ann Agric Environ Med 25:473–480.
Tamura K (1992). Estimation of the number of nucleotide substitutions when there are strong transition-transversion and G + C-content biases. Molecular Biology and Evolution 9:678–687.
Tamura K, Stecher G, Peterson D, Filipski A, Kumar S (2013) MEGA6: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis version 60. Mol Biol Evol 30: 2725–2729
Thompson JD, Higgins DG, Gibson TJ (1994) CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, positions-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. Nucleic Acids Res 22:4673–4680.
Wikel SK (2018) Ticks and Tick-Borne Infections: Complex Ecology, Agents, and Host Interactions. Vet Sci 20:5.