Babesia bovis

Babesia bovis
Scientific classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Clade: Diaphoretickes
Clade: SAR
Clade: Alveolata
Phylum: Apicomplexa
Class: Aconoidasida
Order: Piroplasmida
Family: Babesiidae
Genus: Babesia
Species:
B. bovis
Binomial name
Babesia bovis
V. Babes 1888
Synonyms
  • B. argentina

Babesia bovis is an Apicomplexan single-celled parasite of cattle which occasionally infects humans. The disease it and other members of the genus Babesia cause is a hemolytic anemia known as babesiosis and colloquially called Texas cattle fever, redwater or piroplasmosis. It is transmitted by bites from infected larval ticks of the order Ixodida. It was eradicated from the United States by 1943, but is still present in Mexico and much of the world's tropics. The chief vector of Babesia species is the southern cattle fever tick Rhipicephalus microplus (formerly Boophilus microplus).

In 2007, the sequence of its genome was announced. Measuring 8.2 million base pairs, its genome is remarkably similar to the genome of Theileria parva, the cause of East Coast fever (theileriosis) in cattle.

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