Rhipicephalus muhsamae Morel & Vassiliades 1965

53. Rhipicephalus muhsamae Morel & Vassiliades, 1965.

Afrotropical: 1) Benin, 2) Burkina Faso, 3) Burundi, 4) Cameroon, 5) Central African Republic, 6) Chad (south), 7) Congo, 8) Democratic Republic of the Congo, 9) Ethiopia, 10) Gambia, 11) Ghana, 12) Guinea, 13) Guinea- Bissau, 14) Ivory Coast, 15) Kenya, 16) Mali (south), 17) Mauritania (south), 18) Niger (south), 19) Nigeria, 20) Rwanda, 21) Senegal, 22) South Sudan, 23) Sudan, 24) Tanzania, 25) Uganda; Palearctic: 1) Egypt (Morel 1980, Matthysse & Colbo 1987, Pegram et al. 1987 a, Terenius et al. 2000, Walker et al. 2000, Dioli & Fox 2004, Tomassone et al. 2004, Uilenberg et al. 2013, Langguth et al. 2017, Ouedraogo et al. 2021 a, b, Sylla et al. 2021).

Rhipicephalus muhsamae is difficult to morphologically separate from Rhipicephalus praetextatus, Rhipicephalus senegalensis and Rhipicephalus simus, as stated in Walker et al. (2000); therefore, the geographic distribution of Rhipicephalus muhsamae is somewhat uncertain. Walker et al. (2000) listed the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan as unconfirmed, while ElGhali & Hassan (2012) also did not recognize South Sudan as being within the range of this tick, but its presence in both countries is cited in the original description of Morel & Vassiliades (1965). Rhipicephalus muhsamae is not listed as a tick found in Ghana by Ntiamo-Baidu et al. (2004), but we include Ghana here. Okely et al. (2022) believed that Rhipicephalus muhsamae is not established in Egypt, but we provisionally include Egypt within this species’ range.

Kobayashi et al. (2021) stated that Rhipicephalus muhsamae occurs in Zambia, but we feel that their statement requires confirmation and have excluded Zambia from the geographic distribution of this tick.