Journal of Animal Research and Nutrition

Distribution of Livestock Ticks and Tick-Borne Pathogens, Hosts, Habitat and Diseases in Kenya and Some Parts of Africa: A Mini Review

Livestock Ticks and Tick Borne Diseases (TTBDs) and associated secondary infections adversely impede the development of the livestock industry worldwide. The occurrence of TTBDs is determined by a myriad of factors including, availability of relevant hosts, anthropogenic activities, environmental conditions and climatic variabilities, which influence host accessibility, vector richness and pathogen acquisition and transmission in a natural mode. The current review therefore is focused on evaluating the distribution of tick species in Kenya and some parts of Africa and their associated hosts, pathogens, diseases and habitats as predicted by distribution model records in literature.

The review evaluated more than 61 tick species while presenting gaps in knowledge of some critical information that may undermine the expected predictive power of the distribution models for some of the tick species evaluated. For instance, some tick species did not have specific hosts and/or host-range, type of life cycle, geographic range, their pathogens lacked vector range, tick habitat, pathogens transmitted and disease (s) caused by the identified pathogens. Therefore, building a distribution model without such crucial information would be ineffective in its performance and not give the desired results. Distribution models should put into considerations the drastic changes in geographic ranges, whereby the old ranges could be diminishing and/or expanding while new ones are being exploited. This consideration shall have accumulative impact in developing practical frameworks for sustainable surveillance, control and management of TTBDs in endemic areas such as those of Africa. Existing predictive models need therefore continuous re-designing while putting into considerations emerging factors that determine the occurrence and distribution of TTBDs in order for the models to be relevant and serve the intended purposes.

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Author(s): Wycliffe Wanzalaa

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