AUTH O R S CO NTRI B UTI O N S
The study was designed by BCI. The sampling, laboratory work and bioinformatics analyses and write-up were carried out by BCI, AN, while BCI, LCO and AIO supervised the study and contributed to the interpretation of the data, manuscript editing and approval of the final manuscript.
Data Availability Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [GenBank] at https: //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore, MK347206-MK347212 (tick identification),  MK405447-MK405477 (rickettsia omp A gene), and MK405386-MK405446 (rickettsia omp B gene).