48. Rhipicephalus microplus (Canestrini, 1888). An Afrotropical, Australasian, Nearctic, Neotropical, Oriental and Palearctic species that is also present on islands around the world, and is usually found on Artiodactyla: Bovidae, although it has been collected from Mammalia (several orders), and rarely from Aves (several orders), as well as Squamata: Elapidae (provisionally valid), but not Chamaeleonidae and Anura: Bufonidae, as stated in Guglielmone et al. (2014) based on Keirans (1985c). Aziz and Al-Barwary (2019) reported Rhipicephalus microplus from equids but not cattle in Iraq, and its presence in that country requires confirmation. Rhipicephalus microplus is a sporadic parasite of humans. M: Canestrini (1888), under the name Haemaphysalis micropla and given its current status first in Canestrini (1890, page 493) and definitively in Murrell and Barker (2003) F: Canestrini (1888), under the name Haemaphysalis micropla N: Lahille (1905), under the name Boophilus microplus L: Lahille (1905), under the name Boophilus microplus Redescriptions M: Lahille (1905), Cooley (1946), Hoogstraal (1956a), Boero (1957), Keegan and Toshioka (1957), Kohls (1957a), Floch and Fauran (1958), Arthur (1960a), Gothe (1967), Yamaguti et al. (1971), Londt and Arthur (1975), Yamaguti and Kitaoka (1980), Heyne (1986), Matthysse and Colbo (1987) and Teng and Jiang (1991), all under the name Boophilus microplus, Walker A.R. et al. (2003), Nava et al. (2017), Bermúdez et al. (2018), Horak et al. (2018) F: Lahille (1905), Cooley (1946), Hoogstraal (1956a), Boero (1957), Keegan and Toshioka (1957), Kohls (1957a), Floch and Fauran (1958), Arthur (1960a), Gothe (1967), Yamaguti et al. (1971), Londt and Arthur (1975), Yamaguti and Kitaoka (1980), Matthysse and Colbo (1987) and Teng and Jiang (1991), all under the name Boophilus microplus, Walker A.R. et al. (2003), Nava et al. (2017), Bermúdez et al. (2018), Horak et al. (2018) N: Cooley (1946), Kohls (1957a), Arthur (1960a), Gothe (1967), Yamaguti et al. (1971), Londt and Arthur (1975) and Teng and Jiang (1991), all under the name Boophilus microplus, Nava et al. (2017) L: Bedford (1934), Cooley (1946), Kohls (1957a), Arthur (1960a), Gothe (1967), Kadarsan (1971), Yamaguti et al. (1971), Londt and Arthur (1975), Bohmfalk and Price (1979), Teng and Jiang (1991) and Fujita and Takada (2007), all under the name Boophilus microplus Note: Camicas et al. (1998) state that Rhipicephalus microplus (as Boophilus microplus) is not found in the Palearctic Region, but Guglielmone et al. (2014) argue that bona fide records of this tick are known from that region. The larva of Rhipicephalus microplus (as Boophilus microplus) in Clifford et al. (1961) corresponds, in fact, to the larva of Rhipicephalus australis, based on its Australian origin. The synonymy of Rhipicephalus microplus is lengthy (Guglielmone & Nava 2014), and several redescriptions under different species epithets have been omitted from the above lists. Roy et al. (2018), among others, found morphological and molecular evidence indicating that in Asia a number of cryptic species exist under the name Rhipicephalus microplus. In this sense Minning (1934, 1936) described several species and subspecies in the genera Boophilus and Uroboophilus (some of them from Asia) that are currently considered synonyms of Rhipicephalus microplus. These species and subspecies are not included in the lists above. The studies of Minning (1934, 1936) should be taken into account if the cryptic species now classified as Rhipicephalus microplus are elevated to full species status and formally defined. See also Rhipicephalus annulatus and Rhipicephalus australis.

Published as part of 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, pp. 1-322 in Zootaxa 4871 (1) on pages 229-230, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4871.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/4423340