50. Rhipicephalus microplus (Canestrini, 1888). Afrotropical: 1) Angola, 2) Benin, 3) Burundi, 4) Burkina Faso, 5) Cameroon, 6) Comoros, 7) Eswatini, 8) Ghana, 9) Guinea, 10) Ivory Coast, 11) Kenya, 12) Lesotho, 13) Madagascar, 14) Malawi, 15) Mali (south), 16) Mauritius, 17) Mayotte, 18) Mozambique, 19) Namibia, 20) Nigeria, 21) Réunion, 22) Seychelles, 23) South Africa, 24) Sudan, 24) Tanzania, 26) Togo, 27) Uganda, 28) Zambia, 29) Zimbabwe; Australasian: 1) East Timor, 2) Indonesia (east of Wallace’s Line); Nearctic: 1) Mexico (north), 2) USA; Neotropical: 1) Antigua and Barbuda, 2) Argentina, 3) Bahamas, 4) Barbados, 5) Belize, 6) Bolivia, 7) Brazil, 8) Colombia, 9) Costa Rica, 10) Cuba, 11) Dominica, 12) Dominican Republic, 13) Ecuador, 14) El Salvador, 15) French Guiana, 16) Grenada, 17) Guadeloupe, 18) Guatemala, 19) Guyana, 20) Haiti, 21) Honduras, 22) Jamaica, 23) Martinique, 24) Mexico (south), 25) Montserrat, 26) Nicaragua, 27) Panama, 28) Paraguay, 29) Peru, 30) Puerto Rico, 31) Saba, 32) Saint Eustatius, 33) Saint Kitts and Nevis, 34) Saint Lucia, 35) Saint Martin, 36) Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 37) Suriname, 38) Trinidad and Tobago, 39) Uruguay, 40) USA Virgin Islands, 41) Venezuela; Oriental: 1) Bangladesh, 2) Bhutan (south), 3) Cambodia, 4) China (south), 5) India, 6) Indonesia (west of Wallace’s Line), 7) Japan (the Ryukyu Islands), 8) Laos, 9) Malaysia, 10) Myanmar, 11) Nepal (south and central), 12) Pakistan (east), 13) Philippines, 14) Singapore, 15) Sri Lanka, 16) Taiwan, 17) Thailand, 18) Vietnam; Palearctic: 1) Afghanistan, 2) China (north), 3) Japan (except the Ryukyu Islands), 4) Pakistan (west), 5) South Korea; remote islands: 1) Pacific Ocean Islands (central) of Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and Palau (Saunders 1914, Arag ã o 1936, Cooley 1946, Anastos 1950, Kohls 1950b, 1957a, Floch & Fauran 1958, Audy et al. 1960, Hoffmann 1962, Morel 1966, Yeoman & Walker 1967, Kohls 1969c, Yamaguti et al. 1971, Jones et al. 1972, Smith 1974, Walker 1974, Rawlins 1979, Uilenberg et al. 1979, Payne & Scott 1982, Barré & Morel 1983, Tanskul et al. 1983, Gang & Jang 1985, Garris & Scotland 1985, Instituto Interamericano para la Cooperación en Agricultura 1985, 1988, Rahman and Mondal 1985, Keirans 1985 b, Santos Dias 1988, Need et al. 1991, Corn et al. 1994, Camus & Barré 1995, Kolonin 1995b, Morel 2003, Alvarez et al. 2005, Robbins 2005, Ghosh et al. 2007, Madder et al. 2007, 2012, Durden et al. 2008, Barros-Battesti et al. 2009, Chen et al. 2010, Burridge 2011, Lohmeyer et al. 2011, Vásquez et al. 2011, Adakal et al. 2013, Stachurski et al. 2013, Mastropaolo et al. 2014, Liyanaarchchi et al. 2015a, Ḑttmann et al. 2016, Vongphayloth et al. 2016, Diarra et al. 2017, Kamani et al. 2017, Karim et al. 2017, Nava et al. 2017, Polsomboon et al. 2017, Bermúdez et al. 2018, Horak et al. 2018, Kwak 2018c, Pun et al. 2018, Petney et al. 2019, Silatsa et al. 2019, Balinandi et al. 2020, Lugo-Caro del Castillo et al. 2020, Springer et al. 2020, Bah et al. 2021, Gugliemone et al. 2021, Ledger et al. 2021, Mahlobo & Zishiri 2021, Makenov et al. 2021, Namgyal et al. 2021, Nyabogo et al. 2021, Ouedraogo et al. 2021 a, b, Shekede et al. 2021, Sili et al. 2021, Wang, H.H. et al. 2021, Zhao et al. 2021, Weaver et al. 2022). Most authors have referred to Rhipicephalus microplus as Boophilus microplus, and, to a lesser extent, as Boophilus australis, Boophilus annulatus australis, Boophilus annulatus microplus, Margaropus microplus, Margaropus annulatus australis or Margaropus annulatus microplus, among other names. Canestrini (1888) originally described this tick under the genus Haemaphysalis, but Canestrini (1890) later transferred this species to the genus Rhipicephalus, although his proposal was not accepted by tick taxonomists until Murrell & Barker (2003) again classified this species under Rhipicephalus. Nevertheless, some authors still refer to this tick as Boophilus microplus. Some records of Rhipicephalus microplus in Indonesia (east of Wallace´s Line), East Timor, and territories within the Oriental Zoogeographic Region published prior to the study of Estrada-Peña et al. (2012), who redescribed Rhipicephalus australis, may be the result of confusion with the latter species. Therefore, the presence of Rhipicephalus microplus in Indonesia (east of Wallace’s Line) and East Timor should be considered provisional. There are other questions concerning the geographic boundaries of Rhipicephalus microplus because Burger et al. (2014) found molecular evidence for an alleged cryptic species close to Rhipicephalus microplus in India and China, while Roy et al. (2018) added another potential species related to Rhipicephalus microplus and found in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan. It is expected that additional studies will settle these questions in the near future, but any such investigations should be molecular as well as morphological, and results should be compared with the species described by Minning (1934, 1936) from some of these countries. Aziz & Al-Barwary (2019) reported the presence of Rhipicephalus microplus in Iraq, a record that we believe requires confirmation, and that country is not included within the range of this tick.

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 pages 123-124, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5251.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/7704190