Influence of endosymbionts on the reproductive fitness of the tick Ornithodoros moubata tested through elimination of the microbiota using antibiotic treatments

Over the past ten years, many studies demonstrated the crucial role of the tick microbiome in tick biology. The soft tick Ornithodoros moubata is a hematophagous ectoparasite of Suidae particularly known to transmit the African swine fever virus. Its bacterial microbiota is characterized by a high prevalence of Francisella-like and Rickettsia endosymbionts. The present study aims to better understand the potential influence of the microbiota on the reproductive fitness of O. moubata. A total of 132 adult female ticks were treated using gentamycin or rifampicin added to the blood meal. Half of the ticks also received a supplementation with B vitamins to address the nutritional role of endosymbionts. Over two periods of 50 days, several traits related to reproductive fitness were monitored to investigate the importance of Francisella and Rickettsia for those traits. It appeared that most of the considered reproductive parameters were not affected. However, antibiotic treatments induced an..., This dataset was collected over two different experiments (see manuscript https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.09.539061 for more details). 
The subfile \"ReproductionTraits\" contains the data issued from monitoring of life history traits in arthropods treated or not with antibiotics and/or B vitamins :
Antibiotics and B vitamins were added in a blood meal of adult female ticks Ornithodoros moubata. Six different treatment conditions were tested: No antibiotic with or without B vitamins; Gentamycin with or without B vitamins; Rifampicin with or without B vitamins. Concentrations were: gentamycin 10 µg.mL-1, rifampicin 10 µg.mL-1, and B vitamins: a mix of biotin 1 µg.mL-1, folic acid 30 µg.mL-1, riboflavin 20 µg.mL-1. Antibiotics and B vitamins were replaced by the same volumes of Milli-Q water for negative controls (No antibiotics / No vitamins).
After blood feeding with treatments and being mated with males, the females were monitored during two periods of 50 days. We registered survival and..., Data files are in .csv format with semicolon as separators, they can be visualized using any software capable of handling .csv files (Excel, LibreOffice Calc, TextPad etc…).
R Scripts require R version 4.2.3 (2023-03-15) to be launched and can be used easily with RStudio., # Influence of endosymbionts on the reproductive fitness of the tick Ornithodoros moubata tested through elimination of the microbiota using antibiotic treatments:

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This README document presents the two datasets made available here: \"qPCR\" and \"ReproductionTraits\"

## qPCR - summary

The 7 datasheets made available here result from two campaigns of data collection and have been adjusted to be used into the R script script\_analysis\_of\_qPCR\_results.R available in the same archive.
This script can be launched using R version 4.2.3 and R studio and by installing the packages associated with the library used in the script (see ### packages and library ###).
All datasheets can be extracted in the same folder from the archive qPCR.zip and used directly in the script after adding the path of the folder in the script.

Data are issued from qPCR performed on soft ticks Ornithodoros moubata (first nymphs or adults) treated or not with antibiotics and/or B vitamins to eliminate their micro...