Four hundred seventy-four adult D. occidentalis ticks were collected. No immature ticks were caught. Although no ticks were positive for Francisella tularensis, 39 ticks (8.2%) were positive for R. rhipicephali and 12 (2.3%) were positive for R. philipii 364D as identified by sequencing of the rompA gene and IGR. No significant difference in infection rate between male and female ticks by R. rhipicephali and R. philipii was observed (Fisher’s exact test; P = 0.47). From this group, 114 ticks were selected for Illumina sequencing. Amplification and gel electrophoresis of the V4 segment of the 16S rRNA gene produced visible PCR products of the expected 300 bp size from all ticks, while negative PCR and DNA extraction controls yielded no visible bands and were not sequenced. After quality filtering, 102 ticks remained: 44 positive for SFGR (as identified by rompA and IGR sequencing) and 59 negative for SFGR (forty-five male and fifty-seven female) from the four locations (Table 1); the total number of sequences was 6,799,927 with sample depths ranging from 2013 to 250403 reads (Table S1). Clustering sequences at the 97% level of similarity and discarding OTUs that occurred only once yielded 105,174 different OTUs and 535 different taxa including one unassigned taxon. Rickettsia and Francisella genera were the most prevalent genera present in the ticks, representing 46.8% and 41.4% of all genera, respectively. The next most frequently occurring genera were Sphingomonas (3%), Methylobacterium (1%) and Hymenobacter (0.4%) (Fig. 1).