Southern Reptile Tick
S2, Female, dorsal, Feeding
Southern Reptile Tick
S1, Female, profile
| Southern Reptile Tick S2, Female, dorsal, Feeding | | Southern Reptile Tick S1, Female, profile | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Spiders, Scorpions, Mites & Ticks (Arachnida) | |||
| Order: | Ticks (Ixodida) | ||||
| Family: | Hard Tick (Ixodidae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | Southern Reptile Tick (Bothriocroton hydrosauri) | ||||
| This Photo: | 🔍S3, Female, dorsal🔎 | ||||
Thank you Owen Seeman for identifying this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere Interesting how ones 1st instinct is to try and remove this tick. However, they are just as much a part of our native world as the shingleback. There is very little open information on ticks, etc, and without proper diagnostics we are just guessing that this is the species due to location & host; all engorged female ticks look pretty similar. Note the tiny legs in these photos, they have 8; as do all arachnids. Note the interesting spiracles on these There is another tick, Adelaide's Shingleback Tick (Amblyomma limbatum), that also attacks Shinglebacks. When engorged on the Shingleback, they can't be differentiated. So S1 & S2 could be the latter. But because S3 dropped off naturally, and we got diagnostic photo's, Owen was able to id it. He said "No eyes, a little white spot at the tip of the scutum (and absence of anything on the lateral sides of the scutum), and deep grooves on the scutum (the cervical grooves)." | |||||
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