Ixodes eldaricus Dzhaparidze, 1950

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 : 15-16

80. Ixodes eldaricus Dzhaparidze, 1950 .

Palearctic: 1) Armenia, 2) Azerbaijan, 3) Georgia, 4) Iraq, 5) Israel, 6) Kazakhstan, 7) Kyrgyzstan, 8) Russia, 9) Tajikistan, 10) Turkey, 11) Turkmenistan, 12) Ukraine, 13) Uzbekistan ( Arthur 1959 a, Filippova 1977, Federova 2012, Dilbaryan & Hovhannisyan 2016, Estrada-Peña et al. 2017, Keskin & Erciyas-Yavuz 2019, Tsapko 2020, Uspensky 2021).

Filippova (1974) cautioned about confusing Ixodes eldaricus with Ixodes gibbosus , Ixodes redikorzevi and Ixodes ricinus , which may indicate that some reports of these species are misidentifications. Estrada-Peña et al. (2017) added Ixodes festai and Ixodes frontalis to the list of species that can be confused with Ixodes eldaricus .

Records of Ixodes eldaricus from Iraq and Israel were reported under the name Ixodes tatei in Arthur (1959a), as discussed in Guglielmone & Nava (2014). Filippova (1974, 1977) included Kazakhstan within the range of this tick, but Perfilyeva et al. (2020) did not list Ixodes eldaricus as being found in Kazakhstan, and Keskin & Erciyas-Yavuz (2019) were uncertain whether stable populations of this species exist in Turkey. In the present analysis, both countries, Kazakhstan and Turkey, are provisionally included within the geographic distribution of Ixodes eldaricus .

Nowak-Chmura (2012) found this tick in Poland, but there was no evidence of permanent populations in that country. There are also records from Cyprus, but the specimens were collected from migratory birds ( Kolonin 2009). Consequently, we do not include Poland and Cyprus within the range of Ixodes eldaricus .