131. Amblyomma varanense (Supino, 1897). Australasian: 1) Indonesia (east of Wallace’s Line), 2) Papua New Guinea; Oriental: 1) Bangladesh, 2) Cambodia, 3) China (south), 4) India, 5) Indonesia (west of Wallace’s Line), 6) Laos, 7) Malaysia, 8) Myanmar, 9) Nepal (south and central), 10) Philippines, 11) Singapore, 12) Sri Lanka, 13) Taiwan, 14) Thailand, 15) Vietnam (Kaufman 1972, Tanskul et al. 1983, Keirans 1985b, Kolonin 1995b, Robbins 2005, Durden et al. 2008, Chen et al. 2010, Burridge 2011, Liyanaarachchi et al. 2015 b, Vongphayloth et al. 2016, Kwak 2018c, Pun et al. 2018, Petney et al. 2019, Zhao et al. 2021). Camicas et al. (1998) regarded this tick as an Oriental species, but Amblyomma varanense has also been found in the Australasian Region, while Santos Dias (1993b) and Kolonin (2009) did not treat Amblyomma varanense (under the genus Aponomma) as valid. Most records of Amblyomma varanense have been published under the names Aponomma varanensis, Aponomma lucasi or Aponomma gervais lucasi, all synonyms of Amblyomma varanense, and three of the seven synonyms of Amblyomma varanense listed in Guglielmone & Nava (2014). Kaufman (1972) cautioned that many specimens of this tick have been confused with Amblyomma gervaisi. That author treated Aponomma quadratum from Australia as a synonym of Amblyomma varanense (under the former genus Aponomma in both cases), but Guglielmone & Nava (2014) considered Aponomma quadratum a name incertae sedis, an opinion maintained here. Consequently, Australia is not included within the range of Amblyomma varanense. See also Amblyomma fuscolineatum.

Published as part of 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, pp. 1-274 in Zootaxa 5251 (1) on page 66, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5251.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7704190