Haemaphysalis doenitzi Warburton & Nuttall, 1909

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 : 84

43. Haemaphysalis doenitzi Warburton & Nuttall, 1909 .

Australasian: 1) Australia, 2) Papua New Guinea; Oriental: 1) China (south), 2) India, 3) Laos, 4) Malaysia, 5) Myanmar, 6) Nepal (south and central), 7) Philippines, 8) Singapore, 9) Sri Lanka, 10) Taiwan, 11) Thailand, 12) Vietnam; Palearctic: 1) China (north) ( Hoogstraal & Wassef 1973, Doube & Kemp 1979, Tanskul & Inlao 1989, Chen et al. 2010, Geevarghese & Mishra 2011, Vongphayloth et al. 2016, Kuo et al. 2017, Kwak 2018c, Pun et al. 2018, Zhao et al. 2021).

Several records of Haemaphysalis doenitzi have been published under the name Haemaphysalis centropi , a synonym ( Hoogstraal & Wassef 1973).

The redescription of Haemaphysalis doenitzi by Hoogstraal & Wassef (1973) is entirely based on ticks from Singapore (type locality) and the Malay Peninsula, while specimens from other territories are treated under the subheading “structural variation,” implying that more than one species may exist under the name Haemaphysalis doenitzi . This hypothesis appeared to be confirmed after the description of Haemaphysalis phasiana by Saito et al. (1974), a species whose morphological separation from Haemaphysalis doenitzi is difficult. Both Haemaphysalis doenitzi and Haemaphysalis phasiana are treated here as valid, but authors such as Kolonin (2009) regarded Haemaphysalis phasiana as a synonym of Haemaphysalis doenitzi . The uncertainties involved in identifying these two species are clearly demonstrated on page 208 of Saito et al. ’s (1974) original description of Haemaphysalis phasiana , where these authors state “The taxon phasiana may possibly be a subspecies of doenitzi .” A different opinion was expressed by Sames et al. (2008) when discussing the problem of separating Haemaphysalis doenitzi and Haemaphysalis phasiana , because these authors suspect that both species may be polymorphic, concluding “We do not exclude the possibility that, within our current concept of species, both may be representatives of a complex or complexes of several closely related species. Consequently, a detailed taxonomic study of H. (O.) phasiana and H. (O.) doenitzi needs to be undertaken.” The study proposed by Sames et al. (2008) has yet to be undertaken, and our picture of the geographic distribution of Haemaphysalis doenitzi should be treated as provisional.

The presence of Haemaphysalis doenitzi in Papua New Guinea is based on Hoogstraal & Wassef (1973), but Owen (2011) did not recognize this tick as occurring there, and Papua New Guinea is only tentatively included within its range. Kolonin (2009), Guglielmone & Robbins (2018) and Petney et al. (2019) described a broader range for Haemaphysalis doenitzi than that presented here. The presence of this tick in Tajikistan is based on Kolonin (2009), who treated Haemaphysalis pavlovskyi , a tick from Tajikistan, and the Japanese Haemaphysalis phasiana as synonyms of Haemaphysalis doenitzi , while this tick’s presence in South Korea is based on collections from migrating birds ( Kim et al. 2016). Because the task of identifying Haemaphysalis doenitzi is difficult, the decision to exclude Japan, South Korea and Tajikistan from this species’ distribution should be considered tentative.

Hosseini-Chegeni et al. (2019) stated that the presence of Haemaphysalis doenitzi in Iran requires confirmation, and that country is not included within this species’ range.