rDNA-ITS2 Identification of Hyalomma, Rhipicephalus, Dermacentor and Boophilus spp. (Acari: Ixodidae) Collected from Different Geographical Regions of Iran

Hard ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) are important obligatory blood feeding external parasites of human and animals. There have been a lot of studies on taxonomy of Iranian ixodidae. On the basis of morphological features found basically in adult male. There are problems in tick identification due to their intraspecific variations and morphological changes of the surface body of ticks after blood feeding. Molecular taxonomic tools have been regarded and internal transcribed spacer2 has been selected to amplify the specific part of the genome of ticks. Then using sequence variations of this marker to drive a molecular phylogeny for collected ticks from Iran. Ticks have been collected during favorable seasons in 2007. They have been diagnosed and DNA was extracted. After PCR amplification of the specific segment, fifty two specific bands have shown related to fifty two individuals. Thirty clear bands have been purified and prepared for sequencing. The sequences have been aligned and released in PubMed and their accession numbers are listed. The levels of intraspecific and interspecific variations have been analyzed using suitable soft wares. These variations yielded different phylogenetic arrangement of ITS2 sequences. The level of intraspecific variability of sequences within H. anatolicum anatolicum was high but for D. marginatus and R. turanicus appeared to be low. All D. marginatus sequences were at the same branch, H. dromedarii was most resembled to H. anatolicum anatolicum, and the sequence of R. bursa differed only by 16 fixed bp from the sequence of R. turanicus. These results indicate the advantage of ITS2-rDNA an alysis in phylogeny of hard ticks and additional trials to collect more ticks from different places of Iran is going to be done to promote the results.