Tick Ectoparasites of Animals in Borderline of Iran-Iraq and Their Role on Disease Transmission

Abstract

Background: Since ticks are potent vectors of various diseases, identification of these species are clinically important to protect the public health and control veterinary problems in the communities. We aimed to figure out the frequency of ticks on cows, goats, sheep, lambs, turtles and also obscure hosts in Kurdistan Province, bordered with Iraq June 2012 to May 2013.
 Methods: The hosts were selected randomly and examined individually for tick infestation. In case of infestation, ticks were collected using forceps and then preserved in 70% ethyl alcohol. All collected specimens were preserved in tubes and relative information was recorded and then identified based on morphological characteristics.
 Results: Totally, 1209 ticks were collected. The prevalence of ticks on cows, sheep, goats, lambs, turtles, poultry and obscure hosts was 11.33%, 55.41%, 6.53%, 5.95%, 0.9%, 8.02% and 11.82% respectively. The mean number of ticks on each animal was 1.6. Number of 5 genera, including Rhipicephalus, Argas, Ornithodoros, Hyalomma and Haem­aphysalis and 9 species; including R. sanguineus (60.05%), R. bursa (0.08), Hy. anatolicum (12.33), Hy. asiaticum (1.49), Hy. aegyptium (0.91), Hy. marginatum (0.08), Haemaphysalis parva (4.22), Hyalomma sp. (0.99), Orni­thodoros lahorensis (11.83), and Argas persicus (8.02) were identified.
 Conclusion: The most abundant species in this study area was Rh. sanguineus (60.05%). Due to high prevalence of tick specimens and a variety of collected species from sheep (55.41%), the vaccination of sheep and control of tick vectors are recommended..

A Survey for Ixodid Ticks of Domestic Goats Capra hircus (Linnaeus, 1758) in Baghdad City, Iraq with Notes on Important Identification Characters

“…of the total number of ticks. This result agrees with the findings of (Banafshi et al, 2018;Muhaidi and Alkubaisy, 2010;Mohammad, 2015) (Shubber et al, 2014) who found this species ranked first. It may be attributed to the fact that R. turanicus infests both wild and domestic animals while H. anatolicum infests domestic animals only.…”

“…Three males and one female of Rhipicephalus sanguineus representing 1.31% of the total tick number (Table 2) were recovered from only one male goat. This figure is different from 6.53% of Banafshi et al (2018) in goats from the Iraq-Iran border area. The two studied areas are completely different habitats from urban settlement to a wild rural area.…”

“…From the human health point of view, ticks represent important ectoparasites because they act as the arthropod vectors, transient, reservoirs of different disease agents that threat man and domestic and wild animals health (Hashemi-Fesharki et al, 1994;Cumming, 1998;Fritz, 2009;Bursali et al, 2010;Adang et al, 2015;Liyanaarachchi et al, 2015;Pavlović et al, 2016;Banafshi et al, 2018). This process is controlled by the chances of the encounters between susceptible hosts and the infected ticks and also by the tick prevalence in the environment (Fritz, 2009).…”

Molecular identification of Anaplasma / Ehrlichia spp based on 16S rRNA gene in Hyalomma ticks in border line of Iran-Pakistan

“…anatolicum-infested animals were found the most common and the widest geographical range. This species were reported as the most prevalent hard tick previously from most parts of the country including borderline of Iran-Iraq [16], centre [17], south-eastern and northwestern [15,18], north [19], northwest [20,21], southwest [22], and south [23] of Iran.…”

Morphological and Genotypic Identification of Bovineinfesting Ticks in Al-Diwaniyah Province, Iraq

“…A recent study in north of Iran (borderline with Iraq) focused on determining thetick prevalence in various animals such as cows (23) . Although their study work was relied on using morphological characteristics for identifying the genera of ticks, their data revealed that Rhipicephalus was a dominant genus followed by the presence of Hyalomma genus (23) . This agrees with the current study findings that both genera are actually located in the region.…”