Haemogamasus citelli Bregetova & Nel’zina, 1952

Haemogamasus citelli Bregetova & Nel’zina, 1952: 72, figs 1, 2.

Haemogamasus citelli .— Bregetova, 1955: 275, 281, figs 526–528, 548–550; Bregetova, 1956a: 148, 153, figs 311–313, 332; Lange, 1958: 209, pl. LXXV, K; Strandtmann & Wharton, 1958: 131; Allred, 1969: 109, fig. R-17B; Zemskaya, 1973: 106; Bregetova, 1977: 571, fig. 454 (1); Senotrusova, 1987: 51, fig. 23; Fyodorova & Kharadov, 2012: 276, 277. Haemogamasus kitanoi .—Mašán & Fend’a, 2010: 91 (partim).

Type locality. Russia, Astrakhan’, Volgograd and Rostov regions (all situated in south of European Russia).

Syntypes. ZIN (the holotype was not designated).

Type host. Spermophilus pygmaeus (Pallas, 1778), the little ground squirrel (little souslik).

Principal hosts. Ground squirrels (sousliks) of different species (Nikulina, 2004). Occasionally, it may be found on other species of rodents such as the water vole and hamsters (Nikulina, 2004). Mitchell (1977) reported Hg. citelli in Nepal parasitising the house mouse (the Himalayan subspecies) and the Himalayan rat, Rattus eha (Wroughton, 1849) .

Distribution. Southern parts of European and Asiatic Russia; Central Asia (Nepal), Far East (Mitchell, 1977; Goncharova et al., 1991; Nikulina, 2004). Several records of this species in the southern part of Western Siberia, in Tuva and Buryatia outline its known distribution in the Asiatic Russia (Nikulina, 2004).

Remarks. Mašán & Fend’a (2010: 91) proposed a new synonymy between Hg. citelli and Hg. kitanoi Asanuma, 1948 . However, the authors did not provide any arguments in favour of their opinion.