Rhipicephalus leporis Pomerantzev, 1946

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 : 121

42. Rhipicephalus leporis Pomerantzev, 1946 .

Palearctic: 1) Afghanistan, 2) Kazakhstan, 3) Tajikistan, 4) Turkmenistan, 5) Uzbekistan ( Filippova 1997, Kolonin 2009, Perfilyeva et al. 2020).

Distributional data concerning Rhipicephalus leporis are mostly from Filippova (1997). Walker et al. (2000) did not discuss the types of this tick and did not include Uzbekistan within the range of Rhipicephalus leporis , but Pomerantzev (1946) described this tick from specimens collected in that country. Additionally, Filippova (2008) stated that the lectotype and paralectotype of Rhipicephalus leporis were collected from hares in Kenimekh District, Uzbekistan. Walker et al. (2000) included Iran within the range of Rhipicephalus leporis , but no records from that country were found during our analysis, and the presence of this species in Iran is not recognized in Filippova (1997), Kolonin (2009) and Hosseini-Chegeni et al. (2019). We have therefore provisionally excluded Iran from the range of this tick.

Samshuddin & Mohammad (1988), Hadi et al. (2020) and others cited several reports of Rhipicephalus leporis in Iraq, but its presence there was considered tentative by Walker et al. (2000) and Kolonin (2009). We have tentatively excluded Iraq from the range of Rhipicephalus leporis . However, Hornok et al. (2017a) suggested that Rhipicephalus leporis is found in Kenya and the Ivory Coast, based on two morphological characters of this species and similarity between the DNA sequences of the African ticks and a sequence from an alleged Iraqi Rhipicephalus leporis specimen. It is possible that these ticks from the Ivory Coast, Kenya and Iraq belong to the same species, but not neccesarily Rhipicephalus leporis . This uncertainty will only be resolved by studying the molecular profile of Rhipicephalus leporis collected from the type host (hare) at the type locality, thereby ensuring comparable data, together with sound morphological analyses.