High-resolution photographs of important tick species infesting domestic animals in South Africa

The Covid pandemic and the restrictions on the gathering of people in public places made the hosting of practical training for students a difficulty. While trying to convert practical training to an online format, it was realized that the digital resources that are in the Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases, University of Pretoria were either outdated or of poor quality. A project was started in collaboration with the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp to obtain high-resolution photographs of the important ticks species infesting domestic animals in South Africa.

The project is mostly complete with dorsal and ventral pictures obtained of male and female species of Amblyomma, Argas, Haemophysalis, Hyalomma, Ixodes, Magaropus, Ornithodorus, Otobius and Rhipicephalus species. Where indicated, up to 5X magnified photographs of body parts (e.g. mouthparts) important for tick species identification were taken.

The macro photography was performed on a standard digital Fujifilm X-T4 (26.1 million effective pixels) camera attached to either a Laowa CF 65 mm F2.8 CA-Dreamer macro 2X or Laowa 25 mm F2.8 2.5 – 5X Ultra Macro lens. Godox MF12 flashes were used for illumination. The camera was attached to NiSi focusing rail and focused manually. Capture One software was used to live capture and edit the photographs. At high magnification, the focal plane is very shallow so only a very small part of the image is in focus. Multiple images (sometimes up to 100 images) were taken at different focal planes of the same subject and all the images were focus-stacked using Zerene Stacker software to create an image that was focused throughout.

The images have greatly improved the training of students in tick identification and it is now possible to present the training in an online format. The next step is to work on a digital 3D model of the ticks and good progress has been made on this. Watch this space!