Seventy species of ticks are known from Australia: 14 soft ticks (family 
Argasidae) and 56 hard ticks (family Ixodidae). Sixteen of the 70 ticks in 
Australia may feed on humans and domestic animals (Barker and Walker 2014). The 
other 54 species of ticks in Australia feed only on wild mammals, reptiles and 
birds. At least 12 of the species of ticks in Australian also occur in Papua New 
Guinea. We use an image-matching system much like the image-matching systems of 
field guides to birds and flowers to identify Ixodes holocyclus (paralysis 
tick), Ixodes cornuatus (southern paralysis tick) and Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) 
australis (Australian cattle tick). Our species accounts have reviews of the 
literature on I. holocyclus (paralysis tick) from the first paper on the biology 
of an Australian tick by Bancroft (1884), on paralysis of dogs by I. holocyclus, 
to papers published recently, and of I. cornuatus (southern paralysis tick) and 
Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) australis (Australian cattle tick). We comment on four 
controversial questions in the evolutionary biology of ticks: (i) were 
labyrinthodont amphibians in Australia in the Devonian the first hosts of soft, 
hard and nuttalliellid ticks?; (ii) are the nuttalliellid ticks the sister-group 
to the hard ticks or the soft ticks?; (iii) is Nuttalliella namaqua the missing 
link between the soft and hard ticks?; and (iv) the evidence for a lineage of 
large bodied parasitiform mites (ticks plus the holothyrid mites plus the 
opiliocarid mites).