**3. Hard ticks associated with wild birds**

The importance of birds to maintain biodiversity and ecological balance of nature is notorious [61]. Due to migration, wild birds are of concern to human and animal health worldwide [62] because they can carry infected ticks over long distances, directly influencing the epidemiology of tick-borne diseases in animals and humans. In addition, wild birds themselves can be reservoirs of *Borrelia burgdorferi* sensu lato, and potentially to *Anaplasma phagocytophilum* and *Rickettsia* spp. [62, 63]. Wild birds play an important role in maintaining and dispersing immatures (larvae and nymphs) of several tick species into new locations [61, 64].

Of the total genera of ticks described in Brazil, five have at least one species recorded in association with wild birds. The most common are the hard ticks of the genera *Amblyomma*, *Haemaphysalis* and *Ixodes* [61, 64]. There are also occasional reports of the genera *Rhipicephalus* and *Ornithodoros*. Ticks of the genus *Amblyomma* are the most common on wild birds in the Brazil including the Amazon biome, exclusively for the larvae and nymphs [61, 64]. Adult ticks are only occasionally found on wild birds, with the exception of *Ixodes paranaensis* and *Ixodes auritulus*, which have the entire cycle synchronized with birds [65]. In Brazil, there are no reports of wild birds as a source of pathogens transmitted by ticks to humans, but they can serve as disperser hosts for vectors of Brazilian Spotted Fever (BSF) as *Amblyomma sculptum*, *Amblyomma aureolatum* and *Amblyomma ovale*, in the larvae and nymph stages [64]. Therefore, wild birds act indirectly in the epidemiology of BSF by dispersing and maintaining their vectors in nature.

Over more than 1,900 birds recorded in Brazil, approximately 1,300 reside in the Brazilian Amazon, with a 20% of endemism [66] (**Figure 1**). Of these, approximately 7% are migrants from the northern hemisphere and southern South America, including migrations from other Brazilian biomes [67]. To date, 86 bird species
