Rhipicephalus cliffordi Morel, 1965e

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, Zootaxa 5251 (1), pp. 1-274 : 116

16. Rhipicephalus cliffordi Morel, 1965e .

Afrotropical: 1) Angola, 2) Cameroon, 3) Central African Republic, 4) Congo, 5) Democratic Republic of the Congo, 6) Gabon, 7) Ivory Coast, 8) Liberia, 9) Nigeria, 10) Sierra Leone, 11) South Sudan, 12) Togo, 13) Uganda ( Matthysse & Colbo 1987, Morel 2003, Pourrut et al. 2011, Uilenberg et al. 2013).

Rhipicephalus cliffordi was treated as a synonym of Rhipicephalus pseudolongus in Walker et al. (2000) and Kolonin (2009), and it was not included in the list of ticks of the world by Horak et al. (2002). Conversely, Camicas et al. (1998), Pourrut et al. (2011) and Uilenberg et al. (2013) treated Rhipicephalus cliffordi as a valid species. Guglielmone et al. (2009) noted the absence of type comparisons between Rhipicephalus cliffordi and related species, maintaining the validity of this name, a position also supported in Guglielmone & Nava (2014) and Guglielmone et al. (2014, 2020). The confusion that attends the morphological identification of Rhipicephalus cliffordi , Rhipicephalus compositus , Rhipicephalus longus , Rhipicephalus pseudolongus and Rhipicephalus senegalensis was discussed by Walker et al. (2000) and Uilenberg et al. (2013).

The geographic distribution of Rhipicephalus cliffordi is chiefly based on Morel (2003), who cited many records of this tick published under the names of related species. As a result, our understanding of the range of Rhipicephalus cliffordi should be considered provisional.