Amblyomma albopictum

Neumann (1899) redescribed and provided a new name for this tick, which was originally named Ixodes variegatus (preoccupied) by Lucas (1852). Neumann (1899) also included Brazil within this species’ range; however, its presence in that country has not been confirmed. Schulze (1941) stated that Amblyomma albopictum is found in Haiti but provided a locality record from the Dominican Republic. Floch & Fauran (1959) stated that Neumann (1899) redescribed Amblyomma albopictum from a French Guiana specimen, but such a record is not confirmed in Neumann (1899, 1911 a). The presence of this tick in all three of these countries was accepted in Floch & Fauran (1958), Guglielmone et al. (2003), Burridge (2011) and others, but Brazil and Haiti are here excluded from the geographic distribution of Amblyomma albopictum. Guglielmone et al. (2020, 2021) listed morphological differences in the redescriptions of Amblyomma albopictum by several authors, and perhaps more than one species has been described under this name. Therefore, the morphological diagnosis of Amblyomma albopictum remains uncertain, and this is also reflected in its geographic distribution, which should be considered provisional.

Neotropical: 1) Bahamas, 2) Costa Rica, 3) Cuba, 4) Dominica, 5) Dominican Republic, 6) Honduras (Clifford & Kohls 1962, Morel 1967, Barros-Battesti et al. 2009, Durden et al. 2015, Alvarez et al. 2020, Guglielmone et al. 2021).

M: Lucas (1852), under the name Ixodes variegatus and given its actual status in Neumann (1899) F: Vigueras (1934); see note below N: undescribed L: Černý (1969 b) Redescriptions M: Robinson (1926), Clifford and Kohls (1962), Onofrio et al. (2006 b), Voltzit (2007), Barros-Battesti et al. (2009); see note below F: Clifford and Kohls (1962), Onofrio et al. (2006 b), Voltzit (2007), Barros-Battesti et al. (2009); see note below L: none Note: Guglielmone et al. (2003), based mostly on Černý (1969 b), detail variations in morphological descriptions of this species, concluding that Amblyomma albopictum is poorly defined and that more than one species may exist under this name. This problem is particularly evident with the female of Amblyomma albopictum because Vigueras (1934) described the female without providing illustrations, and the first redescription in Clifford and Kohls (1962) contains discordances between the figures and text, where it is stated that coxa I possesses a bluntly rounded internal spur, while the accompanying figure shows only an external spur, in agreement with Vigueras (1934). Thereafter the male and female of Amblyomma albopictum were redescribed by Voltzit (2007) and Barros-Battesti et al. (2009), and in each paper the description of the female disagrees with that in Clifford and Kohls (1962), while the descriptions of both sexes in Voltzit (2007) differ slightly from those in Barros-Battesti et al. (2009). It seems that the above authors have described different species under the same name, an indication of the need to reexamine the morphology of Amblyomma albopictum, focusing on its populations and type specimens. With this in mind, the host records listed above should be considered provisionally valid.

A Neotropical species, all of whose parasitic stages are usually found on Squamata: Iguanidae; adults and nymphs have been collected from Squamata: Boidae. Durden et al. (2015) found larvae and nymphs on Squamata: Tropiduridae. There are no records of Amblyomma albopictum causing human parasitism.