Geographic distribution of the hard ticks (Acari: Ixodida: Ixodidae) of the world by countries and territories Author Guglielmone, Alberto A. 0000-0001-5430-2889 guglielmone.alberto@inta.gob.ar Author Nava, Santiago 0000-0001-7791-4239 nava.santiago@inta.gob.ar Author Robbins, Richard G. 0000-0003-2443-5271 robbinsrg@si.edu text Zootaxa 2023 2023-03-07 5251 1 1 274 http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5251.1.1 journal article 235222 10.11646/zootaxa.5251.1.1 43227427-a867-4744-9e4c-2b2302524890 1175-5326 7704190 3326BF76-A2FB-4244-BA4C-D0AF81F55637 21. Rhipicephalus decoloratus Koch, 1844a . Afrotropical: 1) Angola , 2) Benin , 3) Botswana , 4) Burkina Faso , 5) Burundi , 6) Cameroon , 7) Cape Verde , 8) Central African Republic , 9) Chad (south), 10) Congo , 11) Democratic Republic of the Congo , 12) Djibouti , 13) Eritrea , 14) Eswatini , 15) Ethiopia , 16) Gabon , 17) Gambia , 18) Ghana , 19) Guinea , 20) Guinea-Bissau , 21) Ivory Coast , 22) Kenya , 23) Lesotho , 24) Liberia , 25) Malawi , 26) Mali (south), 27) Mauritania (south), 28) Mozambique , 29) Namibia , 30) Niger (south), 31) Nigeria , 32) Rwanda , 33) Senegal , 34) Sierra Leone , 35) Somalia , 36) South Africa , 37) South Sudan , 38) Sudan , 39) Tanzania , 40) Togo , 41) Uganda , 42) Zambia , 43) Zimbabwe ( Hoogstraal 1956 a , Elbl & Anastos 1966 d, Yeoman & Walker 1967 , Walker 1974 , Keirans 1985 b , Matthysse & Colbo 1987, Cumming 1999 , Morel 2003 , Pourrut et al. 2011 , ElGhali & Hassan 2012 , Lorusso et al. 2013 , Uilenberg et al. 2013 , Horak et al. 2018 , Kartashov et al. 2021 , Ledger et al. 2021 , Mamman et al. 2021 , Ouedraogo et al. 2021 a , b, Shekede et al. 2021, Sili et al. 2021 , Sylla et al. 2021 ). Many records of Rhipicephalus decoloratus have been published under the name Boophilus decoloratus . Rhipicephalus decoloratus has allegedly been found on Réunion , but Barré & Morel (1983) stated that this tick had been confused with Rhipicephalus microplus (under the genus Boophilus ). Gabaj et al. (1992 , under the genus Boophilus ) reported the presence of Rhipicephalus decoloratus in Libya , and Kolonin (2009) listed that country within its range, but the records of Gabaj et al. (1992) require confirmation. Al-Shaibani (2012) found Rhipicephalus decoloratus in Yemen but left open the possibility that the specimens had been imported, and we provisionally exclude Yemen from the range of Rhipicephalus decoloratus . The presence of this tick in Egypt was due to specimens found on imported cattle ( Okely et al. 2022 ). Records of this tick from India ( Geevarghese et al. 1997 , Ghosh et al. 2007 , Ranganathan et al. 2021 , among others) and Pakistan ( Farooqi et al. 2017 and others) are here considered to be probable misidentifications or, at the very least, require confirmation, while Guglielmone et al. (2021) treated Neotropical records of Rhipicephalus decoloratus from Argentina , Peru and Costa Rica as having resulted from diagnostic errors or misinterpretations of collection data.