Rhipicephalus oculatus Neumann, 1901

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 : 125

56. Rhipicephalus oculatus Neumann, 1901 .

Afrotropical: 1) Botswana, 2) Namibia, 3) South Africa ( Walker et al. 2000, Horak et al. 2018).

Several records of Rhipicephalus oculatus published before 1993 in fact represent Rhipicephalus exophthalmos , a tick described by Keirans et al. (1993b). Theiler & Robinson (1953) were thought to have described the larva and nymph of Rhipicephalus oculatus , but, again, they described the corresponding stages of Rhipicephalus exophthalmos , as discussed in Keirans et al. (1993b). Guglielmone et al. (2020) confused the reference to Theiler & Robinson (1953) with that of Howard (1908).

Walker et al. (2000) treated the occurrence of Rhipicephalus oculatus in Botswana as unconfirmed, but its presence there was confirmed by Horak et al. (2018), and we also include Botswana within the geographic distribution of this tick.

Neumann (1901) described Rhipicephalus oculatus from five adult ticks, including a female specimen collected in Tanzania that has been lost, but Keirans et al. (1993b) believed that this tick is not found in Tanzania, and that Neumann most probably confused Rhipicephalus pravus with Rhipicephalus oculatus . This species has been recorded from Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe, but no specimens are available to confirm its presence in these countries, which are provisionally excluded from the range of Rhipicephalus oculatus (Keirans et al. 1993 b, Walker et al. 2000).