Abstract:
Ticks are important vectors of disease-causing pathogens of humans, wildlife, and livestock,
reducing tick abundance is an important but elusive goal this is because of their range of
distribution. However, previous studies typically did not investigate factors known to affect
changes and survival of tick populations and distribution in different habitat types within
Serengeti national park. This study was conducted in central Serengeti National Park. Data were
collected through the use of drag cloth but also the active search conducted through the use of
square quadrat on five established transects in each habitat type. Microsoft Excel was used to
analyze and establish the mean tick abundance while ANOVA single factor was used to test the
hypothesis. A high abundance of tick species was observed in the woodland savanna followed by
the Riverine habitat and lastly in open savanna grassland. Shannon wiener index revealed that
riverine habitat had a diversity of (H’=1.75). followed by woodland savanna (H’=1.72) and
lastly open savanna grassland (H’=1.27), By using One-way ANOVA found a significant
difference in species diversity by (P ≤ 0.001). The distribution of Amblyomma gemma,
Amblyomma lepidum, Hyalomma impeltum, and Rhipicepharus sp which were common to all
three habitat types with Rhipicepharus pulchellus, Rhipicepharus pravus, Hyalomma spp found
in woodland and savanna and riverine habitat and Hyalomma rufipes which was found only in
only Riverine habitat.
Finally, the use of Pearson correlation Analysis (PCA) on environmental parameters revealed
that humidity (P=0.764e-04) strongly correlated to the high species, and temperature (P=2.19e 13) correlated strongly to low species diversity in the area. Tick control measures should
consider the nature of the habitat which will allow tick control based on their distribution in a
respective habitat where the common method for tick control such as the use of prescribed
burning can’t work.
