Ixodes Persulcatus

Ixodes Persulcatus

 

a parasitic tick of the family Ixodidae. The body of an unengorged female measures approximately 4 mm in length; engorged, the female measures as much as 11 mm, and the male, 2.5 mm. The insect has a dark brown dorsal plate and sharp spines on the coxae of the legs. The larvae and nymphs mainly parasitize rodents and birds. Adult ticks parasitize large animals, most often cattle, and sometimes suck blood from humans. The species is distributed in forests of the southern taiga from Kamchatka and Sakhalin to the Karelian ASSR. It occurs as far south as Moscow, Briansk, and Orlov oblasts and in the Altai. In 1937 the Soviet virologist L. A. Zil’ber first proposed that Ixodes persulcatus transmits the viral causative agent of Far Eastern tick-born encephalitis; this theory was later proved by E. N. Pavlovskii and A. A. Smorodintsev.