Encyclopedia of Parasitology

Living Edition
| Editors: Heinz Mehlhorn

Ticks: Impact of Infestation in Hosts

  • Heinz Mehlhorn
Living reference work entry
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27769-6_4905-1
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Ticks have the following impacts on their animal hosts:
  1. 1.

    Some species may lead to paralysis or even to death as a consequence of the activities of the different compounds in the saliva.

     
  2. 2.

    Agents of disease (e.g., viruses, bacteria, parasites: Theileria spp., Babesia spp.) may be included in the saliva, thus transmitted may cause death or severe disease.

     
  3. 3.

    Engorging ticks may lead to considerable loss in body weight and/or milk production of infested animals. E.g., noninfested cows produced per day 2.81 l more milk than those infested with Rhipicephalus (syn. Boophilus) microplus. This effect is apparently based on a 9 ml milk loss per attached tick.

     
  4. 4.

    Loss of money due to damages at the biting sites which diminish quality of hides used for shoes, etc.

     

Keywords

Body Weight Severe Disease Milk Production Animal Host Considerable Loss 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Further Reading

  1. Jonsson NN (2006) The productivity effects of cattle tick (Boophilus microplus) infestation on cattle. Vet Parasitol 137:1–10CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Institut für Zoomorphologie, Zellbiologie und ParasitologieHeinrich-Heine-UniversitätDüsseldorfGermany