Tick and mites have many endogenous microorganisms, some of which are pathogen. Recently, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases have been reported in Japan, and prevention and control of the disease have been taken. In this session, we would like to introduce the outline of tick-borne infectious diseases reported in Japan from the viewpoint of medical entomology.

Tripteroides bambusa bambusa (Yamada) from the Palaearctic region of Japan, and Tp. b. yaeyamensis Tanaka, Mizusawa and Saugstad from Yaeyama Islands of the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan were elevated to the rank of full species, Tp. bambusa and Tp. yaeyamensis, respectively. The specific status was based on the demonstration of the morphological distinction, the allopatric distribution, the sterile reciprocal cross, and the DNA sequence diversity of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI).

We investigated the occurrence of mosquitoes in both disaster areas of the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami and the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake in the summers after the disasters respectively. In the former area, Culex pipiens group was the most common taxa in adult stage (157.01 individuals per trap per day; 82.55%). In larval stage, Cx. pipiens gr., Cx. tritaeniorhynchus and Anopheles sinensis were collected. While in the latter area, Aedes albopictus (19.29; 62.21%), Cx. pipiens gr. (5.23; 16.87%) and Armigeres subalbatus (4.34; 14.0%) were common in adult catch. The larvae of the three species were also commonly collected in the larval sampling. We compared the mosquito’s occurrence between the two areas to find that abundance and species composition were completely different. In the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami area, a great number of comparatively large sized water bodies were made by the tsunami, and they became good habitats for Cx. pipiens gr. In contrast in the Kumamoto earthquake area, there were collapsed houses and a large number of small artificial containers left there as well as the tarpaulins used to cover damaged property, all of which served as good breeding sites for Ae. albopictus.

Simulium (Simulium) thongsahuani Takaoka & Choochote (Diptera: Simuliidae) originally described from southern Thailand, is newly recorded from Perak, Peninsular Malaysia. This species represents the second member of the Simulium griseifrons species-group known from Peninsular Malaysia and brings the number of black fly species recorded from Peninsular Malaysia to 63. Some female and pupal morphological characters differing from the original description are noted.

I made a new model of indoor tabanids’ trap for evaluating preventive measures against the tabanids’ intrusion into barns. The trap is made of plywood and blue and black cotton cloths. The trapping part is black tined sticky rat traps pinned at the central part of trap. The field test was performed at the barns of Omyojin Farm of Iwate University in the summer of 2017. Insect screen was set to every opening of one barn (treated barn) and the other barn (control barn) remained without screen. As the results, 1,167 flies of tabanids, namely Atylotus horvathi and Tabanus humilis (small sized), T. nipponicus and T. mandarinus (middle sized) and T. trigonus and T. chrysurus (large sized), were captured by the newly developed indoor tabanids’ traps set at both barns. 261 flies were captured at the treated barn and 906 flies were captured at the control barn. No middle and large sized flies were captured at the treated barn. Thus, I concluded that the trap is effective for evaluating the preventive measures of invasion to the cow barn of tabanids.