Rhipicephalus muhsamae Morel and Vassiliades, 1965

Guglielmone, Alberto A., Petney, Trevor N. & Robbins, Richard G., 2020, Ixodidae (Acari: Ixodoidea): descriptions and redescriptions of all known species from 1758 to December 31, 2019, Zootaxa 4871 (1), pp. 1-322 : 231

51. Rhipicephalus muhsamae Morel and Vassiliades, 1965 .

An Afrotropical and Palearctic species whose adults are usually found on Mammalia (several orders). Larvae and nymphs have been collected from Rodentia : Sciuridae , while nymphs alone have been recovered from Lagomoprha: Leporidae , and Rodentia : Muridae . Rhipicephalus muhsamae is a rare parasite of humans.

M: Morel and Vassiliades (1965)

F: Morel and Vassiliades (1965)

N: Saratsiotis (1977); see note below

L: Saratsiotis (1977); see note below

Redescriptions

M: Walker et al. (2000), Walker, A.R. et al. (2003)

F: Walker et al. (2000), Walker, A.R. et al. (2003)

N: Walker et al. (2000)

L: Walker et al. (2000)

Note: the descriptions of the nymph and larva by Saratsiotis (1977) have been largely ignored but not criticized in studies of Rhipicephalus muhsamae ( Pegram et al. 1987 a, Walker et al. 2000). This is probably due to the fact that morphological separation of Rhipicephalus muhsamae , Rhipicephalus praetextatus and Rhipicephalus simus is extremely difficult ( Walker et al. 2000), but there remains no reason to consider the descriptions in Saratsiotis (1977) invalid. Additionally, Horak et al. (2018) warn that it can be very difficult to morphologically separate the larvae and nymphs of Rhipicephalus follis , Rhipicephalus gertrudae , Rhipicephalus simus and Rhipicephalus tricuspis , preferring instead to consign such specimens to the Rhipicephalus gertrudae group.