Morphological, biological and molecular characteristics of bisexual and parthenogenetic Haemaphysalis longicornis

The reproductive mechanism of Haemaphysalis longicornis is quite different from many other animal species. In this article, several characteristics of parthenogenetic and bisexual populations of H. longicornis were analyzed, including some important micro-structures, synchronized life cycle feature and sequences of mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene. The results suggested even though many observations of the two populations were similar to each other, some important differences also existed. The genital apron of parthenogenetic females was wider than that of bisexual females. Parthenogenetic individuals (except engorged females) were significantly larger in weight than bisexual individuals (p<0.01; unfed nymph p<0.05); the difference of nymphal premoulting, female feeding and preoviposition, and egg incubation periods between the two populations were significant (p<0.01); hatch percentage of parthenogenesis was lower than that of bisexual population (69% and 73%, respectively); parthenogenetic individuals had a slightly longer development cycle than bisexual individuals (134 and 129 days, respectively). Hybridization attempts failed between them. Comparing to the two strains of bisexual H. longicornis, parthenogenetic strain of H. longicornis inserted two nucleotides of thymine, though the genetic distance of 16S rDNA between the bisexual and parthenogenetic populations was 0. In order to clarify the relationships of the two reproductive populations of H. longicornis, the sequences of 16S rDNA of four strains of two other species were also analyzed. The divergence between Hebei and Xinjiang strains of Rhipicephalus sanguineus was 0, and the sequences were totally identical between them. The divergence between the two subspecies of Hyalomma asiaticum was 0.01. The results indicated that the relationship between bisexual and parthenogenetic H. longicornis was certainly closer than that between subspecies, but farther than that between the same reproductive populations of conspecies.