Argas persicus

Hart (1899) documented the presence of the fowl tick Argas persicus and presumed that these ticks were imported from the United States to Trinidad and Tobago. He observed that the infested birds sat down, dropped their wings and experienced fever. He also reported that dressing infested fowl with petroleum killed the ticks.

As mentioned above, Argas persicus, a Palearctic species, can be easily confounded with other Argas species during identification, and many reports of A. persicus on poultry in the Neotropics may actually represent misidentifications of A. miniatus or another related species (Kohls et al. 1970).

Argas persicus is known to transmit Borrelia anserina (Borreliosis) and Aegyptionella pullorum (Aegyptianellosis) (Jongejan and Uilenberg 2004) and also transmits Slovakia virus, Slovakia (Labuda and Nuttall 2004). Larval ticks produce a toxin which causes paralysis in chickens (Walker et al. 2007).

Distribution: Cosmopolitan (Cruz 2001).