Tick burden and tick species prevalence in small ruminants of different agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Pakistan

ABSTRACT

The agricultural industry is a critical component of the economy in Pakistan and is a source of income for nearly half of the country’s population. However, damage caused by ticks and tick-borne diseases is severely hampering ruminant production. Tick bites damage animal hides and tick-transmitted pathogens can cause devastating diseases like babesiosis and anaplasmosis that can severely harm or even kill livestock and humans in some cases. The aim of this study was to collect ticks from goats and sheep of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region of Pakistan to determine what species were present and which ones were most abundant. Out of 1,450 ticks collected from 290 animals, representing six agencies of the FATA region, we found that Rhipicephalus sanguineus and Haemaphysalis sulcata were the two most abundant species on small ruminants in the region. More broadly, we observed that ticks of the species Rhipicephalus were more abundant (57.2%) than Haemaphysalis (27.6%) and Hyalomma (15.2%) from our sampling. We also found that location and month of the year were two important factors in predicting tick infestations in goats and sheep at our study sites. Knowledge gleaned from this study can be used by tick control programmes in the FATA region to target specific species at times of the year when they are most prevalent. However, more research is needed to validate our findings in the region and additional studies of this type must be conducted in other regions of Pakistan to generate an accurate countrywide tick infestation model.

KEYWORDS:

• Goat
• sheep
• Pakistan
• ticks
• small ruminants
• prevalence
• FATA region

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the Department of Zoology, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan Pakistan for providing adequate facilities for this research. No external funding was provided for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.