Molecular Identification of Hyalomma Ticks and Application of Bacillus thuringiensis Toxins as an Effective Biological Acaricide

( ) is considered one of the most important entomopathogenic microorganisms. It produces potent toxins against insects. Therefore, the present study investigates the bioacaricidal properties of on the tick species. Firstly, we identify ticks based on morphological screening and molecular characterization. The cytochrome C oxidase subunit I (COX1) gene was selected for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis, which resulted in the amplification of 656 bp. The amplified products were sequenced, and the isolated (COX1) gene of ticks was submitted to the gene bank of NCBI (Accession No. OR077934.1). The nucleotide sequences were retrieved from the NCBI data bank by BLASTn analysis, which confirmed that all obtained sequences belong to genus , and multiple alignments confirmed that the sequence of Tandojam-isolate (HA-TJ) 100% aligned with KP792577.1, KP792595.1, KX911989.1, and OQ449693.1. The generated phylogenetic tree confirmed that sequences of HA-TJ COX1 clustered with a single clad of , , and . The acaricidal effect of toxins spore crystal mix ( SCM) and crystal proteins ( cps) was evaluated against larvae and adult life stages of ticks in vitro. We applied cps and SCM separately with different concentrations and calculated the mortality percentage. Adult mortality was estimated at the 8th, 10th, 12th, and 15th days posttreatment and larval mortality after 24 h. During treatment of the adult life stage, at first, ticks were immersed in different concentrations of cps and SCM for 5 min after the treatments, and the samples were transferred to sterile containers and placed in an incubator with 80% humidity at 23°C. Furthermore, cps produced the highest mortality on Day 15, 89 ± 1.00% at a concentration of 3000 g/mL, followed by the 12th, 10th, and 8th days produced 83 ± 1.91%, 70 ± 1.15%, and 61 ± 1.00%, respectively. SCM produced mortality of 69 ± 1.91% on Day 15 at a concentration of 3000 g/mL, followed by the 12th, 10th, and 8th days at 57 ± 2.51%, 37 ± 1.91%, and 34 ± 2.00%. The present study revealed that toxins produced a significant ( < 0.05) increase in mortality rate in adults of ticks. Additionally, cps and SCM were used to treat the larval stage. The treatments were applied to calculate the mortality percentage via the Laravel packet test. At a 1500 g/mL concentration, cps resulted in the highest mortality of 98 ± 1.15%; this was followed by 1250 g/mL, 1000 g/mL, and 750 g/mL, which produced mortalities of 76 ± 1.63%, 60 ± 1.63%, and