Prevalence of Beauveria pseudobassiana among entomopathogenic fungi isolated from the hard tick, Ixodes ricinus.

Human and animal disease-transmitting hard ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) are of great concern for public health and animal farming. Alternatives to tick control by chemical acaricides are urgently needed, and one intensively evaluated biocontrol strategy is based on the use of tick-pathogenic filamentous fungi. An indispensable prerequisite for the development of tick-derived fungal isolates into registered myco-acaricides is their sound taxonomic characterisation.