6. Dermacentor bellulus (Schulze, 1935c). An Oriental and Palearctic species whose adults are usually found on Artiodactyla: Suidae; larvae and nymphs are usually collected from Rodentia: Muridae. Adult ticks alone have been collected from Carnivora: Canidae and Ursidae; immature stages have also been recovered from Carnivora: Mustelidae, Lagomorpha: Leporidae, Scandentia: Tupaiidae, and rarely from Galliformes: Phasianidae. Dermacentor bellulus is a very rare parasite of humans. M: Schulze (1935c), under the name Indocentor bellulus, placed in the genus Dermacentor by Luh and Woo (1965), and reinstated as a valid species by Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b) F: Sugimoto (1937a), under the name Dermacentor atrosignatus, as explained in Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b) N: Kitaoka and Suzuki (1981), under the name Dermacentor taiwanensis, as explained in Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b) L: Kitaoka and Suzuki (1981), under the name Dermacentor taiwanensis, as explained in Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b) Redescriptions M: Sugimoto (1937a), under the name Dermacentor atrosignatus, Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b) F: Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b) N: Teng and Jiang (1991), under the name Dermacentor taiwanensis, Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b) L: Teng and Jiang (1991), under the name Dermacentor taiwanensis, Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b) Note: Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b) state that the Dermacentor sp. in Keegan and Toshioka (1957) and Yamaguti et al. (1971) is in fact Dermacentor bellulus, while Teng and Jiang (1991) correctly redescribe Dermacentor taiwanensis, although their redescriptions of the larva and nymph of Dermacentor taiwanensis correspond to Dermacentor bellulus. It appears that records and redescriptions of Dermacentor taiwanensis, especially by Japanese workers, such as Fujita and Takada (2007) and Yamauchi and Takada (2015), need to be reassessed. Our information concerning the status of Dermacentor bellulus is chiefly drawn from Apanaskevich and Apanaskevich (2015b).

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 135-136, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4871.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/4423340