Morphological and molecular characterization of adult Dermacentor pavlovskyi Olenev, 1927 (Acari: Ixodidae)

Abstract

Dermacentor pavlovskyi Olenev, 1927 is the type tick species of subgenus Asiacentor Filippova & Panova, 1974 in the genus Dermacentor, which is only found in Xinjiang of China and Central Asia. In the present study, the males and females of D. pavlovskyi from Xinjiang were firstly characterized in detail morphologically by scanning electron microscopy and molecularly by partial 16S rDNA, COI and ITS2 sequences. The results of phylogenetic analysis indicated that D. pavlovskyi and Palaearctic subgenus Dermacentor (s. str.) species clustered to form a phylogenetic lineage, and their genetic distances were smaller than those between Palaearctic and non-Palaearctic subgenus Dermacentor (s. str.) species. Among Palaearctic subgenus Dermacentor (s. str.), D. pavlovskyi seems to be much closer to D. raskemensis, D. marginatus and D. niveus than to D. silvarum, D. nuttalli, D. everestianus and D. reticulatus. We also suggested that D. montanus, as the closest relative species of D. pavlovskyi, should be further investigated.