[5] This species occurs in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, but mainly in wildlife reserves.

Each of these stages requires a blood meal, suitable hosts being humans, poultry, and members of the pig family, Suidae.

Adult females lay a batch of eggs, which hatch into larvae that develop into the first nymphal stage.

[8] Relapsing fever in humans is a vector-borne infectious disease caused by certain bacteria of the genus Borrelia.

In wild members of the family Suidae, the disease seems symptomless, but in domestic pigs, it causes a haemorrhagic fever with high mortality rates.