4. Acaricides: current status and sustainable alternatives for controlling the cattle tick, Rhipicephalus microplus, based on its ecology

Abstract

Worldwide the livestock industry, from small farmers to large industrialized farms, is affected by arthropods and arthropod-borne diseases at various scales, which cause huge losses and are a constraint to socio-economic development. Farmers make considerable efforts to prevent and control pest and disease incidence, often requiring the use of vaccines, if available, drugs and pesticides. Examples of current problems are presented, to set the stage for the detailed and state-of-the-art presentations of specific cases of livestock pests and their associated diseases and modern methods of prevention and control.

Biosecurity at Cattle Farms: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

“…Negative impact of some preventive treatments on the environment or human health has been documented in the past. Some examples include the development of (multi)drug resistance linked to the preventive use of antibiotics in some intensive farming system [51], the contamination of the environment related to treatments of animals with acaricides [52] and the negative effects on beneficial insects consecutive to the use of chemical larvicides in the control of vector breeding sites [53]. Such negative impacts could be avoided in the future, showing the importance of having the One Health approach and build interconnections between health, agriculture and the environmental sector and considering the natural and social sciences which can facilitate the adoption of BSM by the population [50].…”

1. Livestock pests and vector-borne diseases – a much neglected subject

“…In (sub)tropical areas producers of beef, dairy and leather encounter financial losses due to high levels of resistance to acaricides in the cattle tick (Rhipicephalus microplus (Canestrini)). One avenue to develop new control tools is to take advantage of the semiochemicals emitted by the host and the differential attractiveness between cattle (Brugman et al 2018;Kinney Ferreira de Miranda Santos et al 2018;.…”

Back Matter

“…In (sub)tropical areas producers of beef, dairy and leather encounter financial losses due to high levels of resistance to acaricides in the cattle tick (Rhipicephalus microplus (Canestrini)). One avenue to develop new control tools is to take advantage of the semiochemicals emitted by the host and the differential attractiveness between cattle (Brugman et al 2018;Kinney Ferreira de Miranda Santos et al 2018;.…”