Hyalomma (Hyalommina) arabica sp. n. parasitizing goats and sheep in the Yemen Arab Republic and Saudi Arabia.
Hyalomma (Hyalommina) arabica sp. n. is described from 62 adults (29 males, 33 females) taken throughout the year from 23 goats and two sheep, mostly at 200 m altitude in the southern tihama foothills of Ta'izz Province, Yemen Arab Republic. One female from a goat at 2,300 m altitude in this Province may have attached to the host elsewhere and a male from Mecca, Saudi Arabia, was on a goat imported from an unknown source for the traditional religious pilgrimage feast. We postulate that the original host of adults was the Nubian ibex, Capra ibex nubiana F. Cuvier (Artiodactyla: Caprinae). This parasite is most closely related to H. (H.) kumari Sharif, which infests chiefly wild and domestic Caprinae from India to northwestern Iran and Tadzhik, SSR. It also shows relationships to H. (H.) punt Hoogstraal, Kaiser and Pedersen, which parasitizes gazelles and domestic mammals in Somalia and Ethiopia, but differs more widely from the third African-Arabian member of this subgenus, H. (H.) rhipicephaloides Neumann, which feeds on the Nubian ibex and gazelles in the Red Sea and Dead Sea areas. The Hyalomma subgenus Hyalommina now contains seven species, four confined to the Indian subcontinent (including Nepal, Burma, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Afghanistan) and Southwest Asia, and three in eastern Africa north of the equator and Arabia.
D000818:Animals; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D006041:Goats / Q000469:parasitology*; D008297:Male; D012529:Saudi Arabia; D012756:Sheep / Q000469:parasitology*; D013987:Ticks / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000145:classification* / Q000502:physiology; D015006:Yemen