We gratefully acknowledge the Zoonoses in Livestock in Kenya (ZooLinK)
team for collection of tick samples and Dr. Lillian Wambua (ZooLinK) for
shipment of ticks to Nairobi from Busia and access to blood sample
biobank and the database containing the metadata of the samples. We also
acknowledge the technical contribution of Daniel O. Ouso for robotic
total nucleic acid extraction, Kevin K. Ogola, Edwin K. Ogola, and the
rest of the Martin Lüscher Emerging Infectious Diseases (ML-EID)
laboratory team, to this work. We also acknowledge Bester Mudereri of
icipe GIS and Remote Sensing unit for assistance in producing the
study site map. This study received financial support from following
organizations and agencies: The ZooLinK project was supported by the
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Department
for International Development, the Economic & Social Research Council,
the Medical Research Council, the Natural Environment Research Council
and the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory, under the Zoonoses and
Emerging Livestock Systems (ZELS) programme, grant reference
BB/L019019/1. It also received support from the CGIAR Research Program
on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH), led by the International
Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). We also acknowledge the CGIAR
Fund Donors (
http://www.cgiar.org/funders/); the study also received
support from the European Union’s Integrated Biological Control Applied
Research Program (EU-IBCARP) (grant number: DCI-FOOD/2014/346-739) and
icipe institutional funding from UK’s Department for
International Development (DFID); Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency (Sida); the Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation (SDC); Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia; and the
Kenyan Government. Tatenda Chiuya was supported by a German Academic
Exchange Service (DAAD) through the
icipe ARPPIS-DAAD scholarship
and through a UP postgraduate bursary. The funders had no role in the
design, data collection, interpretation, or decision to submit this
publication.