About the Manual

 

          The Barros-Battesti Handbook (et al., 2006) is currently Brazil's most complete and up-to-date book on Neotropical Ixodidae Ticks. It presents a fundamental content for those who intend to graduate and graduate students to identify species and to subsidize several areas of research in the areas of tick taxonomy, tick-host relationships, tick-borne pathogens transmission, and others.

 

          Regarding the identification of ticks, the manual presents keys for genera and species of the two tick families: Argasidae and Ixodidae. The great majority of the keys are well illustrated with photos in scanning electron microscopy and optical microscopy.

 

          Therefore, the intention was not to make a new manual but to improve the understanding of the taxonomic characters of the species we collect.

 

          With regard to the Ixodidae family, the manual presents an illustrated dichotomic key for males and females of most species that occur in Brazil, making it easy to identify them. However, some characters required in the keys are often not very visible since, for each species, it presents "only" 4 photos (1 ventral and 1 dorsal for males and females) per species, making it difficult to see them better.

 

          Therefore, using an Olympus SZX12 Stereoscopic Binocular Microscope (kindly donated by Professor Marcelo Gordo from the Ecology Laboratory of UFAM) and a AmScope MU300 - 5 MP Digital Camera (personal purchase) coupled to it and with the aid of illumination incident, nearly 1,900 images were made of which just over 200 were selected for the illustration of this manual.

 

          An average of 6 images were collected for males and 6 images for females, totaling (on average) 12 images per species with the objective of significantly improving understanding of the essential characters and facilitating the identification of ixodidae tick species.

 

          The characters recorded in the images were based, for the most part, on the dichotomic keys found in the Barros-Battesti manual et al. (2006) as well as all the terminologies used to name them.