| abstract | The tick fauna on Australasian fruit bats (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae) is reexamined. In addition to the previously described species Caries batuensis (Hirst, 1929), C. solomonis (Dumbleton, 1958) and C. rennellensis (Clifford and Sonenshine, 1962), three new species are recognized: C. papuensis n. sp. described from the larva and adults, and C. multisetosus n. sp. and C. hadiae n. sp. described from larvae only. Caries steini (Schulze, 1935) is synonymized with C. batuensis. All species examined are associated with cave inhabiting bats in the genera Dobsonia, Rousettus and Eonycteris. Most tick species have a relatively narrow host range, but this may be a secondary effect of high specificity for off-host habitat, rather than the result of coadaptation to specific hosts. |