Seasonal distribution and faunistic of ticks in the Alashtar county (Lorestan Province), Iran

Introduction Ticks are non-permanent obligate parasites that have considerable medical-veterinary and zoonosis importance. In this regard a study designed to investigate the distribution and fauna of ticks in the Alashtar county in Iran from April and March 2014. Methods Ticks were collected from livestock farms and facilities from selected rural and geographically location in the Alashtar county. Based morphological characteristics and reference identification keys, ticks were identified. Results A total of 549 ticks including 411 hard and 138 soft ticks were found. Ten tick species including Haemaphysalis concinna (0.36%), Haemaphysalis sulcata (0.36%), Hyalomma anatolicum (0.18%), Hyalomma dromedarii (0.18%), Hyalomma marginatum (1.45 %), Hyalomma schulzei (0.36%), Rhipicephalus annulatus (0.18%), Rhipicephalus bursa (28.1%), Rhipicephalus sanguineus (43.63%) and Argas persicus (25.2%) were identified. Tick seasonal distribution were 47.26%, 22.63%, 14.96% and 15.15% in the spring, summer, autumn and winter, respectively. The tick distribution was more from plain areas (64.96%) than the mountainous areas (35.04%). The rates of the tick contamination were 97.3% and 2.7% in the traditional and industrial livestock's, respectively. The livestock contamination ranks to the hard ticks were cattle (39.51%), sheep (34.15%) and goats (26.34 %), respectively. Chi-square analysis showed a significant difference among the seasonal distribution of the ticks in the spring, summer and autumn or winter; between the tick distribution in the plain and mountainous areas; and between the traditional and industrial livestock's tick contamination (P < 0.05). Conclusion Present study proves to change the traditional livestock's to the industrial livestock's. These findings highlight the importance of ticks and shows need to their control and tick pest management.


Introduction
Ticks are non-permanent obligate and the most frequent ectoparasites (ticks, mites, lice and fleas) of the terrestrial vertebrates that have considerable medical-veterinary and zoonosis importance [1,2]. They are a serious threat to animal health and public health in many parts of the world because they are able to direct damages and transmission of parasitic, viral and bacterial pathogens [3,4]. Control of ticks and tick-borne diseases are the most important sanitation to protect livestock health and their products, particularly prevention of tick-borne diseases transmitted to humans [5,6]. Premature and adult stages of ticks are attacked to different groups of animals and feed on their blood and interstitial fluids. They irritate their host by relatively long-term feeding and continuous saliva injection to their body. Tick feeding period lasts form several minutes in soft ticks to weeks in hard ticks that in addition to release them from one place to another, cause local discomfort of the hosts and facilitate the transmission of pathogens to the other hosts [7]. Ticks are remained infected for lifetime by feeding on their host infected blood and transfer the infection in a way of trans-ovarial or trans-stadial transmissions. Ticks also have one or more various hosts in their life cycle that they transmit the infections from wild to domestic hosts by their feeding [8,9].
Because of any tick species may have ability to transfer a certain type of a disease. Identifying tick species, their abundance and distribution, have a great effect to understand the epidemiology of the diseases and their control in each region or globally. As much research is also being done on a vaccine against the diseases such as development of anti-tick vaccines [10], tick species identifying is also important of this aspect in the areas.
The Alashtar County with the various peripheral villages is considered one of the most important areas in terms of animal husbandry and it is the most densely populated livestock areas (

Methods
Site of study: Alashtar county is located at an altitude of 1,600 meters above the sea level in the northern of Lorestan province (Table 1, Figure 1). Nomadic herders are common among the Alashtar county peoples. Lorestan province is located in the west of Iran ( Figure 1). It is a very beautiful place with a high perspiration rate and a good climatic condition, making this location green and cool and it is the route from the south to the north of Iran. This province has some popular tourist attractions with historical and cultural significance. Between the higher ranges lie many fertile plains and low hilly, well-watered districts. Lorestan covers an area   Figure 1).  (Table 1 and Figure 1, Figure 2). Ticks were carefully separated from livestock by a curve forceps and safe anesthetic compounds such as ether and chloroform. The hard ticks were collected with taking the anterior part of the ticks at the junction to the host then they were rotated around the forceps axis or flipped and they were carefully withdrawn directly from the skin.

Tick collection and identification
We considered around the animal nests and crevices of livestock walls for the soft ticks [22]. The samples were placed into special pipes (Eppendorf tubes). They were immediately transferred to Medical Entomology Laboratory at School of Medicine, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences after recording detailed specifications including site collection, livestock facilities and type of animal, date of collection and environment temperature and packing. Then we followed next steps with personal protection and safe work ( Figure   2). Based morphological characteristics and reference identification keys, ticks were identified to the genus, species and gender ( Figure   2). For final tick identification approval, the identified samples were sent to reference acarology laboratory at the Razi Institute in Karaj.

Results
During twelfth monthly sampling and among the 12 selected villages  (Table 1). A total of 549 ticks including 411 hard and 138 soft ticks were collected and identified. The highest and the lowest frequency of ticks were observed at the Abbas-Abad (15.66%) and Sarabe-Chenar (4.0%), respectively (Table 2). Figure   3 shows the frequency of the collected ticks in the Alashtar county from April and March 2014. The highest (17.5%) and the lowest  (Table 3). Chi-square analysis showed a significant difference among the seasonal distribution of the ticks in the spring, summer and autumn or winter (P < 0.05) while it didn't showed a significant difference between the autumn and winter. The hard tick frequency deceased from spring to winter in the year while increased for the soft ticks ( Table 3 (Table 3). Unlike the hard ticks, the most activities of the soft ticks were observed in the winter and then in the autumn while they had lower activities in the spring and summer (Table 3 and Figure 3).
From the collected hard ticks, the male and female rates were 48.4% and 51.6%, respectively. There was no significant difference between the tick sex rates (P > 0.05). The tick distribution was more from plain areas (64.96%) than the mountainous areas (35.04%) ( Table 4). Chi-square analysis showed a significant difference between the tick distribution in the plain and mountainous areas (P < 0.05). The most frequent species were Rhipicephalus sanguineus and Rhipicephalus bursa in the mountainous and plain areas while the other species had low abundance in the mentioned areas (  (Table   5).

Discussion
In this study, the three genera and nine species of the hard ticks were also diagnosed in Iran [11,25]. As previous studies (0.06 and 0.63%) [16,18], present study shows that H. concinna is less commonly encountered (0.36%) and found in spring. In Iran, as present study which found in the mountainous areas of the Lorestan province (Table 3, Table 4, Figure 4) [45,46].

Conclusion
In this study, we identified ten tick species including nine hard (Ixodidae) and one soft tick species (Argasidae

Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interest.

Authors' contributions
Behroz Davari, Mansour Nazari and Aref Salehzadeh were collaborated to design the work and also help to analysis and interpretation of the work. Firoz Nazari Alam is the acquisition of the work and also collected the data. Hassan Nasirian prepared the manuscript. Mohammad Abdigoudarzi aids to analysis and the interpretation of data. All authors were read, approved and agreed to the accountable for all aspects of the work and they were ensured that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Acknowledgments
This study is the second author's M.Sc. thesis in Medical Entomology