in southern Sudan, Kenya, Yemen, Sinai, and the Eastern Desert of 

 Egypt yielded no haemaphysalids other than the ones listed above. 

 It would appear that this tick spends rather little time feeding 

 and that, except possibly locally, hyrax- parasitizing haemaphysalids 

 are rare in nature. 



DISEASE RELATIONS 



Unstudied. It is of interest to conjecture that this tick 

 might be the vector of the piroplasm Echinozoon hooc;straali Garn- 

 ham, 1951, found in the blood of the liquatoria Province hosts. 



IDENTIFICATION 



Males ; This is a small species, var;/ing from 1.66 mm. to 

 1.88 mm. in overall length and from 0.99 mm. to 1.22 mm, in width. 

 It superficially resembles the ubiquitous H. leachii but may be 

 easily differentiated from the subspecies muhsami and even more 

 easily from the subspecies leachii by the short, broad, bluntly 

 rounded ventral spur of palpal segment 3, the greater lateral 

 concavity of the palpi, the reduction of basal palpal spurs and 

 of coxal spurs, the few, short hairs on the coxae, and other 

 characters. 



The scutum has moderately numerous punctations, which are 

 shallow, coarse, nondiscrete, mostly large, and widely scattered 

 over the surface; cervical grooves fednt to obsolete; lateral 

 grooves enclosing first and second pairs of festoons (extension 

 beside second festoon may be faint or obsolete), extending to 

 anterior fourth of scutum. The coxae are only weakly armed with 

 slight ridges and bear at most six small hairs; the tarsi taper 

 gradually but may be more abruptly tapered in small specimens. 

 The basis capituli diverges widely anteriorly and has bluntly 

 pointed cornua about one fourth as long as the basis capitvili. 

 The palpi are short and salient with a weakly produced baso- 

 lateral angle and a concave lateral margin; the ventral spvor of 

 segment 3 is short, wide and bluntly rounded. 



Females ; In this sex, the capitulum is like that of the male 

 except for the more elongate palpi and generally smaller cornua. 



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