MATERIALS AND METHODS

Units of Study
They were made up of / composed of 624 ticks infesting 64 canines of different ages,
breeds and sexes that presented themselves to the outpatient Services of the Policlínica
Veterinaria of La Univesidad del Zulia (PVU-LUZ) between November 2006 and March
2007
Clinical/epidemiological data.
Every dog was submitted / underwent to an exhaustive clinical examination in order to
determine the different diseases it may present. From each animal, all adult ticks were taken
and deposited in a container, which was labeled and identified with the general information
of the animal.
Identification of the ticks
The extraction of ticks was done manually, they being kept in the container with a moist
cotton ball and a temperature of 20 °C (68° F) until identification, which did not exceed
more than a day after extraction. For the classification and identification of ticks, they were
observed through a stereoscopic magnifying glass, following the Keirans and Litwak keys,
recording all morphological characteristics.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Of the 64 dogs sampled, a total of 624 ticks were collected, for an average of 9.8 ticks per
animal. 100% of the collected specimens belonged to the species R. sanguineus. This
coincides with some authors, who report that this is the tick that most commonly parasitizes
urban dogs in Venezuela, which plays an important role in the transmission of pathogens of
importance in veterinary medicine, such as Ehrlichia canis, Anaplasma platys, Babesia
canis, among others. However, an investigation identifies the species Dermacentor
variabilis in Venezuelan dogs, which was not found in this report. It is likely that this tick
has a limited distribution, as it has never been found in the country before. The number of
ticks recovered, according to sex, was 366 females and 258 males, as observed in FIG. 1.
These results coincide with other studies conducted in Venezuela [16], Brazil [15] and
Chile [18], where more female than male ticks were also found. An inverse sexual relation
was observed by Klober in Venezuela. On the other hand, Klober reported a higher degree
of infestation, finding values ranging from 49 to 210 ticks per dog, so it can be considered
that in the present study parasitism was low. Regarding the age of canines, infestation by
the species R. sanguineus showed a tendency to be more common in animals less-younger
than one year old (78.1%) than in animals older than one year old (21.9%), although no
statistical differences were found between these values, FIG. 3. This is probably because
young animals do not yet have a developed immune system, which might suggest that they
are more susceptible to tick infestation. However, there are studies reporting that R.
sanguineus infestation of dogs is not influenced by age [14]. Also, ticks were collected
from 31 pure-bred (48.4%) and 33 mixed-breed (51.6%) canines without significant
differences (P- 0.05), FIG. 4. This coincides with Klober’s [14] research on canine ticks,
who pointed out that race is not a factor determining parasitism by R. sanguineus.