Castor Bean Tick

The castor bean tick (Ixodes ricinus) is a species of hard bodied tick in the family Ixodidae, native chiefly to Europe and extending into North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Russia. Unfed adults measure roughly 2.4 to 2.8 millimeters but can swell to about 11 millimeters when engorged with a blood meal, and the species has no eyes and lacks festoons along the body margin. It favors humid woodlands, heaths, and forests where hosts are plentiful, and it is a major disease vector, transmitting the bacteria that cause Lyme disease and the virus that causes tick borne encephalitis.