Rhipicephalus longus Neumann, 1907a

Guglielmone, Alberto A., Nava, Santiago & Robbins, Richard G., 2023, Geographic distribution of the hard ticks (Acari: Ixodida: Ixodidae) of the world by countries and territories, Zootaxa 5251 (1), pp. 1-274 : 122

45. Rhipicephalus longus Neumann, 1907a .

Afrotropical: 1) Angola, 2) Burundi, 3) Cameroon, 4) Central African Republic, 5) Congo, 6) Democratic Republic of the Congo, 7) Ethiopia, 8) Gabon, 9) Kenya, 10) Malawi, 11) Mozambique, 12) Rwanda, 13) South Sudan, 14) Tanzania, 15) Uganda, 16) Zambia ( Clifford & Anastos 1962, Elbl & Anastos 1966 c, Yeoman & Walker 1967, Walker 1974, Pegram et al. 1981, Matthysse & Colbo 1987, Tandon 1991, Walker et al. 2000, Morel 2003, Pourrut et al. 2011, ElGhali & Hassan 2012, Uilenberg et al. 2013).

Several records of Rhipicephalus longus have been published under the name Rhipicephalus falcatus , and, to a lesser extent, Rhipicephalus capensis longus or Rhipicephalus confusus , all synonyms of Rhipicephalus longus ( Camicas et al. 1998, Walker et al. 2000).

Rhipicephalus longus can be difficult to identify. Clifford & Anastos (1962) described morphological characters that are useful for separating this species from Rhipicephalus pseudolongus and Rhipicephalus senegalensis ; nonetheless, Walker et al. (2000) stressed the problems involved in differentiating these ticks. Matthysse & Colbo (1987) and Uilenberg et al. (2013) included Rhipicephalus praetextatus and Rhipicephalus cliffordi among the species than can be confused with Rhipicephalus longus , respectively. For these reasons, the geographic distribution of Rhipicephalus longus presented here should be treated as provisional.

Aeschlimann (1967) reported the presence of Rhipicephalus longus in the Ivory Coast, but records there require confirmation, and we have tentatively excluded the Ivory Coast from the range of this tick. Norval (1985b) recognized a record of Rhipicephalus longus from Zimbabwe but believed that endemic populations in that country had not been proved to exist, and Walker et al. (2000) treated its presence there as unconfirmed. Accordingly, we provisionally exclude Zimbabwe from the range of Rhipicephalus longus . ElGhali & Hassan (2012) listed this tick as found in South Sudan, but its presence there is unconfirmed. Farooqi et al. (2017) allegedly found Rhipicephalus longus in Pakistan, but this is probably an identification error.