Molecular Identification of Veterinary Important Ticks of Bangladesh Using CO1 Gene Sequences

Rain, Faria Farhana; Aslam, Abu Faiz Md.

doi:10.21608/ejvs.2025.363898.2664

Molecular Identification of Veterinary Important Ticks of Bangladesh Using CO1 Gene Sequences

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Zoology, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka-1342.

10.21608/ejvs.2025.363898.2664

Abstract

Ticks transmit diseases, cause anemia, decrease productivity, and lead to significant economic losses in livestock. Morphological identification if often difficult, but recent molecular methods offer a fast and reliable approach for species identification. This study aimed to identify the veterinary significant tick species in Bangladesh through the analysis of the mitochondrial cytochrome C oxidase (MT-CO1) gene. A cumulative total of 575 tick samples were collected from cattle and goats from various regions of Bangladesh. Among them, 22 specimens were selected based on differences in morphological characteristics and sequenced. BLAST search was done to check the similarity between the retrieved sequences and database of sequences from NCBI GenBank. Three tick species were identified based on the sequence information namely Rhipicephalus microplus, Haemaphysalis bispinosa and Hyalomma anatolicum. In the multiple sequence analysis, a total of 12 polymorphic sites were identified. The interspecific genetic divergence range of veterinary important ticks was between 0.171 - 0.223. Phylogenetic analysis showed that species from the same genus were clustered together in the same clade. Haplotype analysis showed that Hyalomma anatolicum was mostly diverged from Haemaphysalis bispinosa by 100 mutational steps. This research contributes to easy identification of veterinary important tick pests by CO1 gene sequences thus help in attempting appropriate control measure against tick pests.

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