Amblyomma latum Koch, 1844a

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 : 51-52

67. Amblyomma latum Koch, 1844a .

Afrotropical: 1) Angola, 2) Benin, 3) Botswana, 4) Burkina Faso, 5) Burundi, 6) Cameroon, 7) Central African Republic, 8) Chad (south), 10) Congo, 11) Democratic Republic of the Congo, 12) Eswatini, 13) Ethiopia, 14) Ghana, 15) Guinea, 16) Guinea-Bissau, 17) Ivory Coast, 18) Kenya, 19) Liberia, 20) Malawi, 21) Mali (south), 22) Mozambique, 23) Namibia, 24) Niger (south), 25) Nigeria, 26) Rwanda, 27) Saudi Arabia (south), 28) Senegal, 29) Sierra Leone, 30) South Africa, 31) South Sudan, 32) Sudan, 33) Tanzania, 34) Togo, 35) Uganda, 36) Yemen, 37) Zambia, 38) Zimbabwe ( Hoogstraal 1956a, Morel & Magimel 1959, Lamontellerie 1960, Aeschlimann 1967, Yeoman & Walker 1967, Kaufman 1972, Walker 1974, Hoogstraal et al. 1981, Keirans 1985 b, Matthysse & Colbo 1987, Konstantinov et al. 1990, Tandon 1991, Santos Dias 1993 b, Terenius et al. 2000, Morel 2003, Ntiamoa-Baidu et al. 2004, Al-Khalifa et al. 2006, Burridge 2011, ElGhali & Hassan 2012, Uilenberg et al. 2013, Horak et al. 2018).

Most records of Amblyomma latum have been published under the name Aponomma latum , and to a lesser extent Aponomma ochraceum .

The presence of this tick in Egypt, as discussed by Kaufman (1972), is based on a larva collected in Cairo, and Afghanistan is also included within the range of Amblyomma latum , based on two larvae collected in that country ( Santos Dias 1961b, under the former genus Aponomma ), while Carvalho et al. (2016) field collected an alleged adult of Amblyomma latum in Spain. However, we feel that these records require confirmation before Egypt, Afghanistan and Spain can be included within the geographic distribution of Amblyomma latum . Ali et al. (2019) recorded Amblyomma latum from Pakistan, but the senior author of the paper, Abid Ali, in a personal communication to Alberto A. Guglielmone, stated that the ticks were imported from Africa.

Aponomma laeve , a name treated as incertae sedis in Guglielmone & Nava (2014), was described by Neumann (1899) from ticks allegedly collected in southern South America, but Lahille (1905) stated that the geographic data for this collection were incorrect. Kaufman (1972) and Camicas et al. (1998) regarded Aponomma laeve as a synonym of Aponomma latum . Sharif (1928) and Ghosh et al. (2007) treated Aponomma laeve as established in India. This may indicate the presence of Amblyomma latum in the Oriental Region, but all these records are regarded here as doubtful.

Guglielmone et al. (2014) stated that Amblyomma latum is probably the tick most commonly introduced to many countries via the international reptile trade, as demonstrated by the large number of papers from different parts of the world describing this situation. Eventually, these numerous introductions may result in Amblyomma latum becoming established outside the Afrotropical Zoogeographic Region.