Studies on the daily mean egg number in relatic to the mean weight of the egg masses produced by the Southern cattle tick, Boophilus microplus (Canestrini, 1887)

Abstract

The response to acaricides by ticks, as determined by the Drummond adult test method, involves the use of the figure 20.000, an estimate of the number of larvae in one gram of eggs.
When dealing with large quantities of data, the use of exact counting methods is both tedious and sometimes unnecessary. The use of sampling techniques is essential if the large amounts of data required for quantitative studies are to be obtained. Weighing the egg mass is particularly convenient because the eggs of ixodid ticks are characteristically laid in a single clump. Results showed that when the mean weight of egg masses was confronted with egg counts, between days 1 and 20 of the opposition period, the figure 20.000 represented satisfactorily the number of eggs in one gram of eggs, the same isn’t true when the weights of the eggs masses were taken only on the 20th or only on the 30th days of the
oviposition-incubation period.