Coxixodes Schulze, 1941

Barker, Stephen C., Kelava, Samuael, Heath, Allen C. G., Seeman, Owen D., Apanaskevich, Dmitry A., Mans, Ben J., Shao, Renfu, Gofton, Alexander W., Teo, Ernest J. M., Byrne, Andrew F., Ito, Takuya, Tan, Craig J., Barker, Dayana & Nakao, Ryo, 2023, A new subgenus, Australixodes n. subgen. (Acari: Ixodidae), for the kiwi tick, Ixodes anatis Chilton, 1904, and validation of the subgenus Coxixodes Schulze, 1941 with a phylogeny of 16 of the 22 subgenera of Ixodes Latreille, 1795 from entire mitochondrial genome sequences, Zootaxa 5325 (4), pp. 529-540 : 536

Subgenus Coxixodes Schulze, 1941

Type species: Ixodes ornithorhynchi Lucas, 1846 .

Type depository: The notes of Guglielmone et al. (2014) about the location of the types (syntypes) are correct: MNHN ( Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle , Paris, France) .

Species included: Ixodes ornithorhynchi Lucas, 1846 .

Subgeneric combination: Ixodes (Coxixodes) ornithorhynchi Lucas, 1846 .

Diagnosis: With characteristics of its sole constituent species, Ixodes ornithorhynchi . Roberts (1960) has generous diagnoses of the female, nymph and larvae; these will not be repeated here.

Distribution: eastern Australia.

Remarks: Ixodes ornithorhynchi is the only tick that is known to parasitise Ornithorhynchus anatinus (Shaw, 1799) , the platypus, which occurs only in freshwater creeks and rivers in eastern Australia; this information together with the detailed diagnosis Roberts (1960) makes I. (Coxixodes) ornithorhynchi readily distinguishable from all other ticks.

Guglielmone et al. (2020) has a list of the descriptions and redescriptions of the sole species in this subgenus, I. ornithorhynchi . Coxixodes was described as a genus by Schulze (1941) with Ixodes ornithorhynchi as the type species. The decision by Schulze to describe a new genus was based mainly on the structure of Haller’s organ and characteristics of the coxae (refer to Guglielmone et al. 2017). The genus Coxixodes was then treated as valid by Zumpt (1951) but has been ignored by most of the other authors on this topic ( Roberts 1960, 1970; Filippova 1977; Camicas et al. 1998, Guglielmone et al. 2017 among others): none of these authors synonymised Coxixodes Schulze, 1941 with another taxon although Roberts (1960, 1970) placed the sole species in Coxixodes , I. ornithorhynchi , in the genus Ixodes . Camicas et al. (1998), on the other hand, treated Coxixodes as a subgenus. We note that Roberts (1970) has a truncated version of the diagnosis of Roberts (1960) so readers may wish to use the diagnosis of Roberts (1960) in favour of Roberts (1970). Pagenstecher (1861), as explained in Neumann (1899), described the nymph (refer to Guglielmone et al. 2020). Roberts (1969) described the larvae. The male has not been described.