Filippoviella Apanaskevich, Greiman & Fedorov, 2024

Apanaskevich, Dmitry A., Greiman, Stephen E., Fedorov, Denis S., Ahmed, Rokeya & Barker, Stephen C., 2024, A new subgenus of hard ticks, Filippoviella n. subgen. (Acari: Ixodidae) comprising Ixodes trianguliceps Birula, 1895 and I. ghilarovi Filippova & Panova, 1988, parasites of small mammals in Europe and Asia, Zootaxa 5443 (2), pp. 224-236 : 229-230

Subgenus Filippoviella Apanaskevich, Greiman & Fedorov n. subgen.

To comply with the regulations set out in article 8.5 of the amended 2012 version of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature ( ICZN, 2012), details of all new taxa have been submitted to ZooBank. The Life Science Identifier (LSID) for Filippoviella n. subgen. is urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:745DDED7-2533-4AE8-995B-2C3089EF1DDB .

Type species: Ixodes trianguliceps Birula, 1895 , here designated.

Type depository: Holotype female of I. trianguliceps from former Olonets Governorate , Russia is deposited in the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (No. 351) ( Filippova & Panova, 1996).

Species included: Ixodes trianguliceps Birula, 1895 , Ixodes ghilarovi Filippova & Panova, 1988 .

Diagnosis: Filippova (1977) and Filippova and Panova (1988, 1989) provided excellent descriptions and illustrations of all known sexes and stages for I. trianguliceps and I. ghilarovi allowing correct identification of this subgenus.

Species of Filippoviella n. subgen. can be differentiated from all species of Exopalpiger (see Nuttall & Warburton, 1911; Kohls, 1956; Arthur, 1965; Kohls et al., 1969; Roberts, 1970; Apanaskevich & Lemon, 2018) by the following set of characters.

Males: broadly rounded posterior margin of idiosoma (vs idiosoma distinctly convergent to narrowly rounded point posteriorly in Exopalpiger ), 2 pairs of setae on anal valves (vs 3 or 4 setae in Exopalpiger ), clear suture between palpal segments II and III (vs suture indistinct in Exopalpiger ) and syncoxae present on coxae I–III (vs syncoxae on coxae I–IV).

Females: 2 or 4 pairs of setae on anal valves (vs 3 pairs in Exopalpiger , except I. jonesae that has 3 or 4 pairs), subtriangular basis capituli dorsally (vs subrectangular basis capituli in Exopalpiger ), dorsal palpal segment I not extended posterolaterally (vs extended posterolaterally in Exopalpiger ) and syncoxae present on coxae I and II (vs syncoxae present on coxae I–IV in Exopalpiger ; this character has not been evaluated for I. vestitus ).

Nymphs: subtriangular basis capituli dorsally (vs subrectangular basis capituli in Exopalpiger ), dorsal palpal segment I not extended posterolaterally (vs extended posterolaterally in Exopalpiger ), clear suture between palpal segments II and III (vs suture indistinct in Exopalpiger ), and syncoxae present on coxae I and II (vs syncoxae present on coxae I–IV in Exopalpiger ; this character has not been evaluated for I. vestitus ).

Larvae: 5 pairs of setae on scutum (vs 2–4 pairs of setae in Exopalpiger ; this character has not been evaluated for I. vestitus ), Sc 3 pair situated near mid-length of scutum (vs Sc 3 occupying anterior position on scutum close to its anterior margin in larvae of Exopalpiger ; this character has not been evaluated for I. vestitus ); 5 or 6 pairs of marginal dorsal setae (vs 7–9 pairs in Exopalpiger ), dorsal palpal segment I not extended posterolaterally (vs extended posterolaterally in Exopalpiger ), short palpi: ratio length of combined palpal segments II and III to their width less than 2.5 (vs long palpi: ratio more than 2.5 in Exopalpiger ), and lack of syncoxae (vs syncoxae present on coxae I–III in Exopalpiger ; this character has not been evaluated for I. vestitus ).

Etymology: The genus is named after eminent Russian tick taxonomist, Natalia Alexandrovna Filippova (1930–2018) who made an invaluable contribution to the systematics of Palaearctic ticks, including those in the genus Ixodes . By the scientific content and quality her work on the Ixodes of the former USSR ( Filippova, 1977) is, so far, the best guide on the vast majority of species occurring in all of Europe and northern Asia. In that work, she argued that I. trianguliceps was too different from all of the other non-Palaearctic Exopalpiger species to be in the same subgenus. She discussed in person this idea, on multiple occasions, with the lead author (DAA) while he was fulfilling his two theses under her mentorship in the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Distribution: Both species of Filippoviella n. subgen. are distributed exclusively in the Palaearctic Zoogeographic Region ranging from Western Europe to Western Siberia. The distribution of I. trianguliceps ranges from Spain in the west to western Siberia in Russia in the east and from Scandinavia in the north to southern Europe and Turkey in the south, whereas I. ghilarovi is found in Georgia and Russia ( Guglielmone et al., 2023).

Hosts: All parasitic stages of both species feed primarily on various rodents and shrews, but also have been recorded from other groups of mammals as well as birds and reptiles ( Guglielmone et al., 2014, 2020).