Ixodes acuminatus 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 : 6

3. Ixodes acuminatus Neumann, 1901 .

Palearctic: 1) Belgium, 2) France, 3) Germany, 4) Great Britain, 5) Greece, 6) Hungary, 7) Italy, 8) Portugal, 9) Slovenia, 10) Spain, 11) Turkey ( Martyn 1988, Trilar 2004, Cringoli et al. 2005, Santos-Silva et al. 2011, Petney et al. 2015, Diakou et al. 2016, Kar et al. 2017, Hornok et al. 2020 a, Rubel et al. 2021, Rubel & Brugger 2022).

Some records of Ixodes acuminatus have been published under the name Ixodes dorriensmithi , a synonym of Ixodes acuminatus according to Keirans & Hillyard (2001).

Estrada-Peña et al. (2017) cautioned about confusing Ixodes acuminatus with Ixodes ricinus , while Filipe et al. (2021) found that several adult tick specimens which had been morphologically identified as Ixodes acuminatus were classified as Ixodes ventalloi using molecular methods based on the 16S rDNA gene. Sevestre et al. (2021) morphologically identified specimens as Ixodes acuminatus , but a molecular analysis in their study returned an identification as Ixodes frontalis . Such radically different results clearly indicate problems with tick identification, including the possibility that publicly available DNA sequences may have been obtained from misidentified specimens. While by no means an issue restricted to ticks, published sequences are often assumed to be correct, and genetic similarities to mislabeled sequences perpetuate these misidentifications.

Hillyard (1996), Camicas et al. (1998), Pérez-Eid (2007), Kolonin (2009) and Zhang G. et al. (2019) treated Ixodes redikorzevi as a synonym of Ixodes acuminatus , but no type comparisons have been undertaken to support this synonymy ( Guglielmone et al. 2020). See also Ixodes redikorzevi . Both Ixodes acuminatus and Ixodes redikorzevi are treated as provisionally valid here, and Ixodes redikorzevi but not Ixodes acuminatus is tentatively regarded as present in China. In broad terms, Ixodes acuminatus is treated as present in the western Palearctic and Ixodes redikorzevi is considered to occur in the eastern Palearctic.

The presence of Ixodes acuminatus in Slovenia is based on Trilar (2004), whose finding is treated here as provisional.