Ixodes ricinus

200. Ixodes ricinus (Linnaeus, 1758).

Palearctic: 1) Albania, 2) Algeria, 3) Andorra, 4) Armenia, 5) Austria, 6) Azerbaijan, 7) Belarus, 8) Belgium, 9) Bosnia and Herzegovina, 10) Bulgaria, 11) Croatia, 12) Czechia, 13) Denmark, 14) Estonia, 15) Finland, 16) France, 17) Georgia, 18) Germany, 19) Great Britain, 20) Greece, 21) Hungary, 22) Iceland, 23) Iran, 24) Ireland, 25) Israel, 26) Italy, 27) Kazakhstan, 28) Kosovo, 29) Latvia, 30) Liechtenstein, 31) Lithuania, 32) Luxembourg, 33) Malta, 34) Moldova, 35) Montenegro, 36) Morocco, 37) Netherlands, 38) North Macedonia, 39) Norway, 40) Poland, 41) Portugal, 42) Romania, 43) Russia, 44) San Marino, 45) Serbia, 46) Slovakia, 47) Slovenia, 48) Spain, 49) Sweden, 50) Switzerland, 51) Tunisia, 52) Turkey, 53) Turkmenistan, 54) Ukraine (Filippova 1977, Hoogstraal 1979, Jaenson et al. 1994, Kolonin 2009, Paulauskas et al. 2010, Santos-Silva et al. 2011, Bursali et al. 2012, Krčmar 2012, Petney et al. 2012, Erster et al. 2013, Richter et al. 2013, Salvatore et al. 2014, Estrada-Peña et al. 2017, Kadriaj et al. 2018, Sherifi et al. 2018, Hosseini-Chegeni et al. 2019, Knap et al. 2019, Hornok et al. 2020 a, Pavlović et al. 2020, Perfilyeva et al. 2020, Tsapko 2020, Rubel et al. 2021, Rubel & Brugger 2022).

The name Ixodes ricinus was erroneously applied to specimens found in different regions of the world prior to 1950 (Guglielmone et al. 2014). Even today, this name is incorrectly applied, as in the recent studies of Nshimiyimana & Mutandwa (2010) in Rwanda, and Aziz et al. (2018) and Adil et al. (2021) in Pakistan, among others.

The broad distribution of Ixodes ricinus in the Palearctic Region is supported by a great number of studies, although misidentifications causing confusion with related species may be found in some of them, as discussed in Filippova (1977) and Estrada-Peña et al. (2017).

Other records from northern Africa may in fact represent the morphologically related Ixodes inopinatus, as shown by Poli et al. (2020), who found no evidence of the presence of Ixodes ricinus in northern Africa, and no Ixodes inopinatus in Europe. However, Petney et al. (2015) provided evidence of European populations of Ixodes inopinatus, while Fares et al. (2021) argued for the presence of Ixodes ricinus in Tunisia. Further studies are needed to resolve this matter.

Estrada-Peña et al. (2017) included Egypt and Libya within the geographic distribution of Ixodes ricinus (see their figure 67), but no bona fide data have been found to support the presence of stable populations of this species there. We do not include Egypt and Libya within the range of Ixodes ricinus.