author(s)
Alaa N Hatem, Mufid K Abou Turab and Husham K Abdul-Zahra

abstract
This study was conducted to isolate and identification the tick’s species of some wild mammals in Basrah, Thi-Qar and Maissan provinces, south of Iraq, during January to December 2017. The survey was done with a total of 73 wild mammals belonging to 10 species, 53 (72.6%) were found infested with one or more of ticks. 11 species of ticks were identified, 10 are hard ticks, namely: Hyalomma anatolicum Kotch,1844, Hyalomma excavatum Koch,1844, Hyalomma asiaticum Schulze & Schlottke,1929, Hyalomma dromedarii Kotch,1844, Hyalomma sp., Rhipicephalis turanicus Pomerantzev,1941, Rhipicephalus sanguineus Latreille,1806, Rhipicephalus annulatus Say, 1821, Rhipicephalus sp., and Haemaphysalis alderi Feldman & Muhsam,1951. While, one species only belong to the soft ticks: Otobius megnini Duges, 1884. The most prevalent species in the study was H. anatolicum with 20.5%, while, O. megnini was the lowest with 2.6%. The most numbers of ticks was recorded in May with 15.2%, while the lowest was in January with 2.6%. Highest prevalence of ticks was in asiatic jackal and brown bear with 100%, while, small asian mongoose 33.3%. Brown bear was infested with one species of ticks only, while five species of ticks were collected from the hedgehog. H. anatolicum recorded from five species of wild mammals, while Ha. alderi collected from asiatic jackal only.