![\"SPRING15digging-up-new-dermacentor\"](\"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/SPRING15digging-up-new-dermacentor.jpg\")
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Georgia Southern Professor Dmitry Apanaskevich, Ph.D., and his assistant, his wife, Maria, have found 12 specimens of a new tick species, never before identified on earth. The new species, Dermacentor limbooliati<\/em>, is similar to Dermacentor auratus<\/em>, among which it was hiding in plain sight for over 40 years. Apanaskevich has described the new species and its many differences in his article, \u201cDescription of New Dermacentor (Acari: Ixodidae)<\/em> Species From Malaysia and Vietnam,\u201d co-authored with Maria, in the Feb. 25 issue of the Journal of Medical Entomology<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are not that many [species in the Dermacentor <\/em>genus], but they\u2019re very similar to each other,\u201d he said. \u201cHowever, the variabilities within the species plus similarities among the species make it hard to break species apart. Each species is so similar to each other you have to dig through hundreds and hundreds of specimens to really understand how they\u2019re different from one another.\u201d<\/p>\n And dig they did. The specimens are part of the U.S. National Tick Collection (USNTC), where Apanaskevich is assistant curator and Maria, who also has a background in tick research, assists. It is one of the largest tick collections in the world, housed and curated by Georgia Southern since 1990, and holds more than 700 tick species with over one million specimens. To make this discovery, the couple had to pore over 2,000 Dermacentor auratus<\/em> specimens one by one to find the new species.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously you have a desire after the first hundred to say, \u2018I don\u2019t want to look anymore. It\u2019s enough for the research,\u201d said Apanaskevich. “But here\u2019s the trick: you have to look through all 2,000 specimens. And looking through all 2,000 species, we found 12 of the new species. If we didn\u2019t look through all of them, we wouldn\u2019t have found them.\u201d<\/p>\n Apanaskevich, his wife and Georgia Southern Professor Quentin Fang are studying and curating the Dermacentor genus as part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, \u201cSystematics of medically important Dermacentor <\/em>tick vectors,\u201d which provided $327,500 to develop a global-scale taxonomic revision to better identify this genus.<\/p>\n Since beginning the research in 2011, Apanaskevich and his research team have discovered one new Dermacentor species and validated a second species, thought to have been a misidentification for more than 100 years. Both discoveries were published in the Journal of Medical Entomology<\/em> and they allowed him to extend the timeline of the grant. They are also in the process of identifying even more new species discovered among the USNTC specimens.<\/p>\n The team has also described previously unknown nymphs and larvae, redescribed poorly described species and developed identification keys that will help future scientists in their research. Throughout the project, Georgia Southern graduate and undergraduate students have been involved in the research.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, this is a big discovery,\u201d the professor said. \u201cDermacentors <\/em>are considered done, even in my perception. Ticks are well-studied because of their [medical] and [veterinary] importance, and the government put a lot of money into ticks for this reason. And for this same reason finding new ticks is harder and harder. For us, it\u2019s a revelation because we found that even the well-studied ticks still have secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n The new species is named after Lim Boo Liat, Ph.D., a renowned professor and zoologist in Malaysia. Apanaskevich says he is solely responsible for the more than 15,000 specimens of Southeast Asian Dermacentor <\/em>in the collection, which he collected in the late \u201860s and early \u201870s.<\/p>\n \u201cFor five or so years, this guy was collecting samples almost every day from different places in Malaysia,\u201d Apanaskevich said. \u201cIf he didn\u2019t do that, we might have five jars of samples. Because he did, we have more than 200 jars full of vials with ticks just from him.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to the study and publishing, Apanaskevich and Maria are creating detailed illustrations of their discoveries. Apanaskevich draws ink illustrations of the specimens and Maria fills in the textures and colors in Photoshop. These illustrations have already made their way to the cover of the Journal of Medical Entomology<\/em> twice in the last year. – Doy Cave<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" National Tick Collection Contains New Tick Species<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-2667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-spring-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}