Amblyomma breviscutatum Neumann, 1899

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 : 41

18. Amblyomma breviscutatum Neumann, 1899 :

Australasian: 1) Australia, 2) East Timor, 3) Fiji, 4) Indonesia (east of Wallace’s Line), 5) Papua New Guinea, 6) Solomon Islands, 7) Vanuatu; Oriental: 1) Philippines, 2) Thailand; remote islands: 1) Pacific Ocean Islands (central) of Guam, Marianas and Pohnpei ( Silva 1960, Wilson 1969, Tanskul et al. 1983, Keirans 1985 b, Kemp & Wilson 1979, Durden et al. 2008, Owen 2011, Petney et al. 2019, Weaver et al. 2022).

Most records of Amblyomma breviscutatum have been published under the name Amblyomma cyprium , a synonym proposed by Santos Dias (1956a), as discussed in Guglielmone & Nava (2014). Guglielmone et al. (2021) listed several instances where Amblyomma breviscutatum had been confused with congeners.

The geographic distribution of Amblyomma breviscutatum is complicated and rather uncertain. Neumann (1899) described the female of Amblyomma breviscutatum from a tick collected in Congo, but this Afrotropical record is thought to have resulted from a labeling error. This tick has also been confused with Amblyomma geoemydae and Amblyomma testudinarium , and records from China in Chang (1958) and Japan in Keegan & Toshioka (1957) are considered misidentifications. Phan Trong (1977) listed this species under the name Amblyomma dammermani , a synonym of Amblyomma breviscutatum , claiming that it occurs in Vietnam, but its presence there is not recognized by other authors. Petney et al. (2019) doubted the validity of a record of Amblyomma breviscutatum from Malaysia listed in Neumann (1911a) . Taiwan is included in the geographic distribution of Amblyomma breviscutatum by Durden et al. (2008), Kolonin (2009) and Guglielmone & Robbins (2018), but not included here, following Robbins (2005). Finally, Robinson (1926) described Amblyomma quasicyprium from a female tick collected in the Neotropical portion of Mexico, but Keirans (1985b) found this name to be a synonym of Amblyomma breviscutatum (under the name Amblyomma cyprium ) and considered the Mexican locality incorrect. Consequently, Congo, China, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Mexico are excluded from the geographic distribution of Amblyomma breviscutatum .