Richard G. Robbins – författare

Of the 758 species of hard ticks (family Ixodidae) currently known to science, 137 (18%) are found in the Neotropical Zoogeographic Region, an area that extends from the eastern and western flanks of the Mexican Plateau southward to southern Argentina and Chile and that also includes the Greater and Lesser Antilles and the Galápagos Islands. This vast and biotically rich region has long attracted natural scientists, with the result that the literature on Neotropical ticks, which are second only to mosquitoes as vectors of human disease and are of paramount veterinary importance, is enormous, diffuse, and often inaccessible to non-specialists. In this book, three leading authorities on the Ixodidae have combined their talents to produce a summary of essential information for every Neotropical tick species. Under each species name, readers will find an account of the original taxonomic description and subsequent redescriptions, followed by an overview of its geographic distribution and host relationships, including a discussion of human parasitism. Additional sections provide detailed analyses of tick distribution by country and zoogeographic subregion (the Caribbean, southern Mexico and Central America, South America, and the Galápagos Islands), together with a review of the phenomenon of invasive tick species and examination of the many valid and invalid names that have appeared in the Neotropical tick literature. The text concludes with an unprecedented tabulation of all known hosts of Neotropical Ixodidae, including the tick life history stages collected from each host. This book is an invaluable reference for biologists and biomedical personnel seeking to familiarize themselves with the Neotropical tick fauna.

Ticks of the family Ixodidae, commonly known as hard ticks, occur worldwide and are second only to mosquitoes as vectors of agents pathogenic to humans.  Of the 729 currently recognized hard tick species, 283 (39%) have been implicated as human parasites, but the literature on these species is both immense and scattered, with the result that health professionals are often unable to determine whether a particular tick specimen, once identified, represents a species that is an actual or potential threat to its human host.  In this book, two leading tick specialists provide a list of the species of Ixodidae that have been reported to feed on humans, with emphasis on their geographical distribution, principal hosts, and the tick life history stages associated with human parasitism.  Also included is a discussion of 21 ixodid species that, while having been found on humans, are either not known to have actually fed or may have been misidentified.  Additionally, 107 tick names that have appeared in papers on tick parasitism of humans, and that might easily confuse non-taxonomists, are shown to be invalid under the rules of zoological nomenclature.  Although the species of ticks that attack humans have long attracted the attention of researchers, few comprehensive studies of these species have been attempted.  By gleaning and analyzing the results of over 1,100 scientific papers published worldwide, the authors have provided an invaluable survey of hard tick parasitism that is unprecedented in its scope and detail.