Molecular Characterization of Hard Ticks Infesting Camels in the Northern Region of Saudi Arabia Using the Barcoding Gene, Mitochondrial .

The present study aimed to molecularly identify and characterize the hard ticks infesting camels from the northern region (Ha'il province) of Saudi Arabia using the mitochondrial barcoding gene (). The sequences of tick samples from camels in three regions of Ha'il were aligned with those previously reported from different geographic regions, revealing nine haplotypes, of which six were newly described in this study for the first time. These haplotypes were used to determine their phylogenetic relationships using the maximum likelihood method, displaying two distinct clades corresponding to and .