Amblyomma ovale Koch 1844

86. Amblyomma ovale Koch, 1844a.

Nearctic: 1) Mexico (north), 2) USA; Neotropical: 1) Argentina, 2) Belize, 3) Bolivia, 4) Brazil, 5) Colombia, 6) Costa Rica, 7) Ecuador, 8) El Salvador, 9) French Guiana, 10) Guatemala, 11) Guyana, 12) Mexico (south), 13) Nicaragua, 14) Panama, 15) Paraguay, 16) Peru, 17) Suriname, 18) Trinidad and Tobago, 19) Venezuela (Eddy & Joyce 1942, Keirans 1985b, Jones et al. 1972, Durden & Kollars 1992, Guglielmone et al. 2003, 2021, Zerpa et al. 2003, Mendoza-Uribe & Chávez-Chorocco 2004, Alvarez et al. 2005, Labruna et al. 2005 c, Nava et al. 2007, Guzmán-Cornejo et al. 2011, Tarragona et al. 2012, Mastropaolo et al. 2014, Lopes et al. 2016, Miller et al. 2016, Binetruy et al. 2019, Acevedo-Gutiérrez et al. 2020).

Amblyomma aureolatum and Amblyomma ovale were widely confused with each other, under these names and some synonyms, prior to the study of Arag ã o & Fonseca (1961), who carefully defined both Amblyomma aureolatum and Amblyomma ovale.

Camicas et al. (1998) treated Amblyomma ovale as a Neotropical species. While it is true that most records of Amblyomma ovale are from the Neotropics, specimens of this tick collected from local hosts in the USA (Eddy & Joyce 1942, Cooley & Kohls 1944, Durden & Kollars 1992) and northern Mexico (Guzmán-Cornejo et al. 2011) are considered evidence of established populations of Amblyomma ovale within the Nearctic Region. Nevertheless, Burridge (2011) stated that Amblyomma ovale is exotic in the USA.

Hoffmann (1962) included Uruguay within the geographic distribution of Amblyomma ovale, but this tick has not been found in that country (Martins et al. 2014).

Arag ã o & Fonseca (1961) found that specimens of Amblyomma ovale from northern and west-central Brazil were conspicuously larger than ticks collected in southern Brazil. Later, Fournier et al. (2019) reported that Amblyomma ovale from southern and northern Brazil showed significant molecular differences, implying that these tick populations may, in fact, represent different species, while Miller et al. (2016) presented genomic information indicating that a species close to Amblyomma ovale is present in Panama. Most probably the name Amblyomma ovale represents more than one species, and the current range of Amblyomma ovale should be considered provisional.