Nuttalliella namaqua is an unusual tick from perhaps the most basal tick lineage. It is the only member of the Nuttalliellidae due to its rather unusual characters that separate it from the other two tick families, Argasidae and Ixodidae. It gives the scientific community insight on the development of bloodfeeding habits in the tick lineage by suggesting that bloodfeeding developed within the tick family, a habit thought to have developed monophyletically to the exclusion of all other mites.
Little lonely Nuttalliella can tell us about tick evolution because it is often regarded as the ‘missing link’ (as flawed a term as it is) between Argasidae and Ixodidae. New molecular evidence indicate that N. namaqua may be more closely related to Ixodidae and should be regarded as such, but ultimately the position of N. namaqua remains unknown.
In fact, most things about N. namaqua remain quite unknown. Their life history is essentially a void in the literature and most explanations of their ecology are conjecture. Specimens have been isolated from rock fissures and fed on lizards, which are thought to be a preferred host of N. namaqua.
The lone member of Nuttalliellidae indicates through phylogenetic analysis that it is the most basal tick lineage, and may be a working example of how ticks have lived for the past 250 million years. With further work, it may be able to tell us how bloodfeeding evolved and differentiated in ticks.
See here for a great article on this peculiar family (cited below).
Image and information source: Mans BJ, de Klerk D, Pienaar R, Latif AA (2011) Nuttalliella namaqua: A Living Fossil and Closest Relative to the Ancestral Tick Lineage: Implications for the Evolution of Blood-Feeding in Ticks. PLoS ONE 6(8): e23675. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.002367
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