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.
