134. Amblyomma variegatum (Fabricius, 1798). An Afrotropical and Neotropical species whose larvae, nymphs and adults are usually found on Artiodactyla: Bovidae, but all parasitic stages have also been found on Mammalia (several orders) and Aves (several orders); adults and nymphs have been recovered from Squamata: Varanidae and Viperidae; nymphs and larvae have been collected from Squamata: Chamaeleonidae; and nymphs alone have been taken from Squamata: Agamidae and Colubridae. Amblyomma variegatum is a frequent parasite of humans. M: Fabricius (1798), under the name Acarus variegatus and given its current status in Gerstäcker (1873) F: Neumann (1899) N: Neumann (1899) L: Neumann (1899) Redescriptions M: Neumann (1899), Dönitz (1910a), Robinson (1926), Theiler (1943b), Tendeiro (1952), Santos Dias (1953b), Hoogstraal (1956a), Elbl and Anastos (1966a), Uilenberg et al. (1979), Matthysse and Colbo (1987), Voltzit and Keirans (2003), Walker A.R. et al. (2003), Voltzit (2007), Horak et al. (2018) F: Dönitz (1910a), Robinson (1926), Theiler (1943b), Tendeiro (1952), Santos Dias (1953b), Hoogstraal (1956a), Elbl and Anastos (1966a), Uilenberg et al. (1979), Matthysse and Colbo (1987), Voltzit and Keirans (2003), Walker A.R. et al. (2003), Voltzit (2007), Horak et al. (2018) N: Borght-Elbl (1977), Uilenberg et al. (1979), Voltzit and Keirans (2003) L: Theiler (1943b), Camicas (1970), Borght-Elbl (1977), Uilenberg et al. (1979), Voltzit and Keirans (2003) Note: Tendeiro (1963) provides a complex account of the morphology of Amblyomma variegatum adults, including morphological variations and comparisons with related taxa. Theiler (1943b) was unable to find any definitive descriptions of the nymph of Amblyomma variegatum, and, in fact, its description in Neumann (1899) is not very informative, a situation that is even worse in the case of the larval description, also in Neumann (1899), and a commonly encountered problem with many nymphal and larval first descriptions. See also Amblyomma pomposum for its confusion with Amblyomma variegatum.

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 page 128, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4871.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/4423340