Molecular detection of Rickettsia species in ectoparasites collected from two southern provinces of Cambodia.

Arthropod-borne rickettsioses comprise a wide variety of subtypes that are endemic in Cambodia, but there remains very little data on the geographic distribution of the pathogens or their vectors. Surveys were conducted in Koh Kong and Preah Sihanouk Provinces between September 2017 and June 2018 to collect ectoparasites from peridomestic animals and the environment using dragging and flagging methods. Collected ectoparasites were sorted and identified morphologically, then pooled by species, host, and location for molecular detection using Rickettsia genus- and species-specific qPCR and/or multilocus sequence typing (MLST) assays.