The mechanisms by which Rickettsia and Francisella interfere with each other in co-infections are not known and there can be many kinds of interaction, direct or indirect, between microbes and the tick host which can be influenced by the infection behavior of the different bacterial species. Although the localization of R. rhipicephali and R. philipii within ticks has not been determined, FLEs have been found in female tick reproductive tissues and hemolymph (Goethert & Telford, 2005; Scoles, 2004). In addition, non-Francisella bacteria were also associated with low Rickettsia to Francisella ratios. Planococcaceae and Geobacillus were associated with greater abundance of Francisella relative to Rickettsia within the ticks. Although blood meals of the ticks could not be detected by amplification of vertebrate cytochrome b gene from the ticks, 31% of the tick microbiomes had microbiome components similar to canine skin which may suggest the source of a prior blood meal if they incorporated some of the skin flora into their own microbiome as has been shown with host blood microbiomes following feeding (Zhang et al., 2014). Use of SourceTracker for comparison of tick and skin microbiomes is a novel approach and, interestingly, generalized linear models showed that ticks with canine skin microbiome components were less likely to be infected with Ricketssia which is consistent with R. rhipicephali and R. philipii being endosymbionts without a canine host.