The use of infrared images to detect ticks in cattle and proposal of an algorithm for quantifying the infestation

Barbedo, Jayme Garcia Arnal; Gomes, Claudia Cristina Gulias; Cardoso, F. F.; Domingues, R.; Ramos, Jeferson Vidart; McManus, Concepta

doi:10.1016/j.vetpar.2017.01.020

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…It may also be possible to remotely monitor animal-behaviour patterns to determine whether, for example, the amount of movement or rubbing or grooming behaviours are associated with the degree of tick infestation on individual animals. Recent studies in Brazil investigated the use of lowresolution infrared images to detect ticks in cattle, as well as introducing a new automatic method to analyse the images and count the ticks captured in the images (McManus et al 2016;Barbedo et al 2017). However, the authors suggested that the infrared thermographic images have limited potential for detecting ticks in cattle because they enable just a rough estimate for the degree of infestations.…”

Section: Other Possible Phenotypes For Tick Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the authors suggested that the infrared thermographic images have limited potential for detecting ticks in cattle because they enable just a rough estimate for the degree of infestations. However, their algorithm was able to emulate the visual estimates using the infrared thermal images 'reasonably well', suggesting that improvements in the image capture should increase the accuracies for automatic counting (Barbedo et al 2017). In addition to these phenotypes, measurement of skin histamine concentration, or downregulation of tick salivary-gland expression may also be considered in future.…”

Section: Other Possible Phenotypes For Tick Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a new phenotype for tick resistance in beef and dairy cattle: a review

et al. 2019

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About 80% of the world’s cattle are affected by ticks and tick-borne diseases, both of which cause significant production losses. Cattle host resistance to ticks is the most important factor affecting the economics of tick control, but it is largely neglected in tick-control programs due to technical difficulties and costs associated with identifying individual-animal variation in resistance. The present paper reviews the scientific literature to identify factors affecting resistance of cattle to ticks and the biological mechanisms of host tick resistance, to develop alternative phenotype(s) for tick resistance. If new cost-effective phenotype(s) can be developed and validated, then tick resistance of cattle could be genetically improved using genomic selection, and incorporated into breeding objectives to simultaneously improve cattle productive attributes and tick resistance. The phenotype(s) could also be used to improve tick control by using cattle management. On the basis of the present review, it is recommended that three possible phenotypes (haemolytic analysis; measures of skin hypersensitivity reactions; simplified artificial tick infestations) be further developed to determine their practical feasibility for consistently, cost-effectively and reliably measuring cattle tick resistance in thousands of individual animals in commercial and smallholder farmer herds in tropical and subtropical areas globally. During evaluation of these potential new phenotypes, additional measurements should be included to determine the possibility of developing a volatile-based resistance phenotype, to simultaneously improve cattle resistance to both ticks and biting flies. Because the current measurements of volatile chemistry do not satisfy the requirements of a simple, cost-effective phenotype for use in commercial cattle herds, consideration should also be given to inclusion of potentially simpler measures to enable indirect genetic selection for volatile-based resistance to ticks.

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Section: Other Possible Phenotypes For Tick Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Other Possible Phenotypes For Tick Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a new phenotype for tick resistance in beef and dairy cattle: a review

et al. 2019

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“…Moreover, image motion feature extraction was used for recognition of aggressive behaviors among group-housed pigs, with an accuracy of 95.82 and 97.04% for medium and high aggression, respectively (Chen et al, 2017). Infrared thermo-imaging has also been investigated as a potential tool to quantify the number of ticks in the body surface of Brangus cattle, which causes major health and welfare issues, especially in tropical countries (Barbedo et al, 2017).…”

Section: Machine Vision (Cameras)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Large-Scale Phenotyping of Livestock Welfare in Commercial Production Systems: A New Frontier in Animal Breeding

et al. 2020

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Genomic breeding programs have been paramount in improving the rates of genetic progress of productive efficiency traits in livestock. Such improvement has been accompanied by the intensification of production systems, use of a wider range of precision technologies in routine management practices, and high-throughput phenotyping. Simultaneously, a greater public awareness of animal welfare has influenced livestock producers to place more emphasis on welfare relative to production traits. Therefore, management practices and breeding technologies in livestock have been developed in recent years to enhance animal welfare. In particular, genomic selection can be used to improve livestock social behavior, resilience to disease and other stress factors, and ease habituation to production system changes. The main requirements for including novel behavioral and welfare traits in genomic breeding schemes are: (1) to identify traits that represent the biological mechanisms of the industry breeding goals; (2) the availability of individual phenotypic records measured on a large number of animals (ideally with genomic information); (3) the derived traits are heritable, biologically meaningful, repeatable, and (ideally) not highly correlated with other traits already included in the selection indexes; and (4) genomic information is available for a large number of individuals (or genetically close individuals) with phenotypic records. In this review, we (1) describe a potential route for development of novel welfare indicator traits (using ideal phenotypes) for both genetic and genomic selection schemes; (2) summarize key indicator variables of livestock behavior and welfare, including a detailed assessment of thermal stress in livestock; (3) describe the primary statistical and bioinformatic methods available for large-scale data analyses of animal welfare; and (4) identify major advancements, challenges, and opportunities to generate high-throughput and large-scale datasets to enable genetic and genomic selection for improved welfare in livestock. A wide variety of novel welfare indicator traits can be derived from information captured by modern technology such as sensors, automatic feeding systems, milking robots, activity monitors, video cameras, and

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“…The unfed ticks of most tick species range in size from 2 to 7 mm [ 162 ], and tick bites are generally painless [ 163 ]; thus, feeding ticks could likely go unnoticed on skin that is covered with hair. The role of hair in obscuring ticks is supported by studies in cattle in which the use of infrared thermography to quantify ticks was found to be limited by overlying hair [ 164 , 165 ]. In addition, children suffering from undiagnosed cases of tick paralysis (caused by neurotoxin-releasing ticks) have been found after several days to have an engorged tick that is attached to the scalp and concealed by the hair [ 166 ].…”

Section: Evolution Of Alternative Anti-tick Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ticks, Hair Loss, and Non-Clinging Babies: A Novel Tick-Based Hypothesis for the Evolutionary Divergence of Humans and Chimpanzees

Brown¹

2021

Life

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Human straight-legged bipedalism represents one of the earliest events in the evolutionary split between humans (Homo spp.) and chimpanzees (Pan spp.), although its selective basis is a mystery. A carrying-related hypothesis has recently been proposed in which hair loss within the hominin lineage resulted in the inability of babies to cling to their mothers, requiring mothers to walk upright to carry their babies. However, a question remains for this model: what drove the hair loss that resulted in upright walking? Observers since Darwin have suggested that hair loss in humans may represent an evolutionary strategy for defence against ticks. The aim of this review is to propose and evaluate a novel tick-based evolutionary hypothesis wherein forest fragmentation in hominin paleoenvironments created conditions that were favourable for tick proliferation, selecting for hair loss in hominins and grooming behaviour in chimpanzees as divergent anti-tick strategies. It is argued that these divergent anti-tick strategies resulted in different methods for carrying babies, driving the locomotor divergence of humans and chimpanzees.

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The use of infrared images to detect ticks in cattle and proposal of an algorithm for quantifying the infestation

Cited by 16 publications

References 20 publications

Towards a new phenotype for tick resistance in beef and dairy cattle: a review

Towards a new phenotype for tick resistance in beef and dairy cattle: a review

Large-Scale Phenotyping of Livestock Welfare in Commercial Production Systems: A New Frontier in Animal Breeding

Ticks, Hair Loss, and Non-Clinging Babies: A Novel Tick-Based Hypothesis for the Evolutionary Divergence of Humans and Chimpanzees

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