1 Ticks of Tunisia, a review 2 Khawla Elati1, Médiha Khamassi Khbou2, Mourad Rekik3, Barbara Wieland4, Barbara 3 Rischkowsky5, Mohamed Aziz Darghouth1, Mohamed Gharbi1* 4 5 1Laboratoire de Parasitologie. Univ. Manouba. Institution de la Recherche et de 6 l’Enseignement Supérieur Agricoles. École Nationale de Médecine Vétérinaire de Sidi Thabet. 7 2020 Sidi Thabet. Tunisia 8 2Laboratoire de Maladies Contagieuses-Zoonoses-Législation Sanitaire. Univ. Manouba. 9 Institution de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur Agricoles. École Nationale de 10 Médecine Vétérinaire de Sidi Thabet. 2020 Sidi Thabet. Tunisia. 11 3International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Amman 11195, 12 Jordan. 13 4International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 14 5International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Addis Ababa, 15 Ethiopia 16 17 * Corresponding author at: Laboratoire de Parasitologie. École Nationale de Médecine 18 Vétérinaire de Sidi Thabet. Univ. de la Manouba. 2020 Sidi Thabet, Tunisia. 19 Tel: +216 71 552 200; fax: +216 71 552 441. 20 E-mail address:
[email protected] (M. Gharbi). 21 22 Abstract 23 Ticks are ectoparasites of wild and domestic animals and vectors for several pathogens of 24 medical importance and are at the origin of dramatic losses in livestock production. In Tunisia, 25 a total of 18 tick species belonging to 5 genera from the ixodid family were reported: 26 Hyalomma, Ixodes, Rhipicephalus, Haemaphysalis, and Dermacentor. The soft ticks belonged 27 to the Ornithodoros genus with the two species Ornithodoros normandi Larrousse and 28 Ornithodoros erraticus Lucas were also reported. These tick species were collected from 1 29 different bioclimatic zone.