Haemoglobinometry as a method to determine the blood meal size of two argasid tick species

A standardized clinical method for measuring haemoglobin has been applied to measure the quantity of blood ingested by Argas persicus and A. hermanni feeding on chicken and pigeons respectively. The blood fed ticks were added to a reagent which converts all haemoglobin to haemoglobincyanide (HiCN) which can be read spectrophotometrically. The validity of this method was established by comparing haemoglobin determination with the size of blood meals measured by weight. Linear relationships with high correlation coefficients were obtained for nymphs, males, and females of A. persicus and A. hermanni showing that both gravimetric (weighing) and HiCN methods gave similar estimates of ingested blood.