Natalia Aleksandrovna Filippova

Natalia Aleksandrovna Filippova (; 15 February 19305 January 2018) was a world authority on the taxonomy of mites and especially ticks. Her monographs on the identification, morphology, development, distribution and behaviour of the family Argasidae (soft ticks) and the sub-families of Ixodinae and Amblyomminae (hard ticks) are standard works on these important vectors of disease.

Education and personal life Filippova was born in 1930 in Moscow in the USSR. In 1947 she began her studies at Moscow State University followed by advanced study in medical entomology in the Department of Entomology with Aleksei Zachvatkin, Vladimir Beklemishev and especially Evgenii S. Smirnov. In 1952 she was awarded an M.Sc., followed by her Ph.D. in 1955. During this research she worked with Maria V. Pospelova-Shtrom, Vsevolod B. Dubinin and Aleksander S. Monchadsky on the identification of immature Ixodes hard ticks and the taxonomy of ticks in general. She died in St Petersburg in 2018.

Career Filippova specialised in acarology, the study of ticks and mites that carry diseases between humans such as typhus and Lyme disease. They include:

Monographs by N.A. Filippova: 1997 Fauna of Russia. Arachnida, Vol. 4, Part 5: Subfamily Amblyomminae (in Russian) 1977 Fauna of the USSR. Arachnida, Vol. 4, Part 4: Subfamily Ixodinae (in Russian) 1966 Fauna of the USSR. Arachnida, Vol. 4, Part 3: Argasid ticks (Argasidae) (in Russian)

Scientific publications: N.A. Filippova (2017) History of the species range of ixodid ticks, vectors of pathogens with natural nidality (Acari, Ixodidae), as a prerequisite of their intraspecific biodiversity. Entomological Review 97 255 – 275. D.A. Apanaskevitch, N.A. Filippova and I.G. Horak (2010) The genus Hyalomma Koch, 1844. X. redescription of all parasitic stages of H. (Euhyalomma) scupense Schulze, 1919 (= H. detritum Schulze) (Acari: Ixodidae) and notes on its biology. Folia Parasitologica 57 69 - 78. N.A. Filippova (1999) The sympatry of closely related species of ixodid ticks and its possible role in the parasitic systems of natural foci of transmissible diseases (in Russian) Parazitologiia 33 223 - 241. M. Zahler, N.A. Filippova, P.C. Morel, R. Gothe and H. Rinder (1997) Relationships between species of the Rhipicephalus sanguineus group: a molecular approach. Journal of Parasitology 83 302 - 306. N.A. Filippova (1990) The taxonomic aspects of the transmission of the causative agent of Lyme disease (in Russian) Parazitologiia 24 257 - 267. N.A. Filippova (1973) On species of Ixodes persulcatus group (Parasitiformes, Ixodidae), VII. Paleogenesis of the southern branch of the Ixodes persulcatus group and interrelations with I. ricinus (L.) N. (in Russian) Parazitologiia. 3 3 – 13.

She published descriptions of 11 new species of ticks (Anomalohimalaya lotozkyi, Argas latus, Argas macrostigmatus, Argas tridentatus, Argas vulgaris, Dermacentor montanus, Dermacentor ushakovae, Ixodes ghilarovi, Ixodes sachalinensis, Ixodes stromi and Ixodes subterranus) as well as identifying new areas where previously known ticks could be found. In 2015 the ixodid tick Dermacentor filippovae Apanaskevich & Apanaskevich was named after her.