78. Haemaphysalis kitaokai Hoogstraal, 1969 .

Oriental: 1) China (south), 2) Taiwan; Palearctic: 1) China (north), 2) Japan (except the Ryukyu Islands) (Yamaguti et al. 1971, Robbins 2005, Chen et al. 2010, Takano et al. 2014, Li et al. 2020).

Camicas et al. (1998) listed Haemaphysalis kitaokai as a Palearctic species, but there are several records of this tick from the Oriental Zoogeographic Region.

Haemaphysalis kitaokai was originally classified as Haemaphysalis ambigua by Neumann (1906), and there are additional records of this tick published under the names Haemaphysalis ambigua, Haemaphysalis inermis and Haemaphysalis inermis aponommoides, as explained in Yamaguti et al. (1971).

Molecular analyses of populations of Haemaphysalis kitaokai by Li et al. (2018) indicate that more than one species may exist under this name.