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The states of Kansas and Oklahoma, in the central Great Plains, lie at the western periphery of the geographic distributions of several tick species. As the focus of most research on ticks and tick-borne diseases has been on Lyme disease which commonly occurs in areas to the north and east, the ticks of this region have seen little research attention. Here, we report on the phenology and activity patterns shown by tick species observed at 10 sites across the two states and explore factors associated with abundance of all and life specific individuals of the dominant species. Ticks were collected in 2020–2022 using dragging, flagging and carbon-dioxide trapping techniques, designed to detect questing ticks. The dominant species wasA.americanum(24098, 97%) followed byDermacentor variabilis(370, 2%),D.albipictus(271, 1%),Ixodes scapularis(91, <1%)and A.maculatum(38, <1%).Amblyomma americanum,A.maculatum and D.variabiliswere active in Spring and Summer, whileD.albipictus and I.scapulariswere active in Fall and Winter. Factors associated with numbers of individuals ofA.americanumincluded day of year, habitat, and latitude. Similar associations were observed when abundance was examined by life-stage. Overall, the picture is one of broadly distributed tick species that shows seasonal limitations in the timing of their questing activity. 

In agroecosystems, bats can provide a critical ecosystem service by consuming night-flying insect pests. However, many bats also face intense population pressures from human landscape modification, global change and novel diseases. To better understand the behavioral activity of different bat species with respect to space, time, habitat, and other bat species in this environment, we investigated species correlations in space and time over row crop agricultural fields. We used acoustic grids to document spatial and temporal co-occurrence or avoidance between bats and recorded eight species across the 10 field sites we sampled. All species significantly overlapped in two-dimensional space and displayed considerable temporal overlap during the night, yet often exhibited significantly different temporal activity patterns, suggesting fine scale partitioning behavior. Conversion of land to agriculture is likely to increase globally, making it critical to better understand how bat species interact with one another and the landscape to facilitate persistence in these human altered ecosystems. 

The black flying fox ( Pteropus alecto ) is a natural reservoir for Hendra virus, a paramyxovirus that causes fatal infections in humans and horses in Australia. Increased excretion of Hendra virus by flying foxes has been hypothesized to be associated with physiological or energetic stress in the reservoir hosts. The objective of this study was to explore the leukocyte profiles of wild-caught P . alecto , with a focus on describing the morphology of each cell type to facilitate identification for clinical purposes and future virus spillover research. To this end, we have created an atlas of images displaying the commonly observed morphological variations across each cell type. We provide quantitative and morphological information regarding the leukocyte profiles in bats captured at two roost sites located in Redcliffe and Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, over the course of two years. We examined the morphology of leukocytes, platelets, and erythrocytes of P . alecto using cytochemical staining and characterization of blood films through light microscopy. Leukocyte profiles were broadly consistent with previous studies of P . alecto and other Pteropus species. A small proportion of individual samples presented evidence of hemoparasitic infection or leukocyte morphological traits that are relevant for future research on bat health, including unique large granular lymphocytes. Considering hematology is done by visual inspection of blood smears, examples of the varied cell morphologies are included as a visual guide. To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the first qualitative assessment of P . alecto leukocytes, as well as the first set of published hematology reference images for this species.