TickSmart Newsletter
Fall 2018
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It's fall, y'all!
Time for leaf-peeping, pumpkin-picking, cider-drinking fun! We provide details on how you can keep your outdoor activity tick-free for the entire family, as well as some deep dives into the latest in tick science.
Grab yourself a warm beverage and enjoy this season's offerings!
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- Tick Forecast – while the weather is getting cooler, adult blacklegged tick activity is heating up.
- TickSmart Feature – Asian longhorned tick – get the latest on this newly-discovered invasive species.
- Focus on FAQ - Don't forget the pets!
- TEPP Tools – check out our resources to help you spread the word about being TickSmart.
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Current
In much of the Northeast, autumn has been rather elusive. Sporadic warm-ups interspersed with crisp, seasonally cool days have many people enjoying not just more outdoor activity than they might– but while wearing less clothing than they normally would at this time of year! It’s important to know that the end of summer and beginning of fall is when you may find yourself encountering the tiniest of ticks – larvae – as they are finishing up their season (usually August-September, but into October). Depending on your location, they could be blacklegged ticks, Lone Star ticks, and even the invasive Asian longhorned tick larvae. The good news is that most of these newly-hatched ticks are generally considered to be pathogen-free, however
evidence now demonstrates that larval blacklegged (deer) ticks are capable of transmitting a relapsing fever illness caused by a non-Lyme bacteria called
Borrelia miyamotoi, though the prevalence of this disease is still rare. Larval Lone Star ticks are also associated with the tick-induced red meat allergy. The other bad news is that you will most likely not just encounter one since they hatch in batches of 1,500 or more and feed for up to four days before spending the winter hidden away, developing into nymphs.
Duct tape or a lint roller is a helpful way to remove lots of teeny tiny larval ticks that are crawling on you all at once. Since these stages typically latch on at the shoe level,
treating shoes and socks with permethrin repellent also can help prevent larvae from ever climbing aboard. These itty-bitty ticks are on their way out, though, and will return again next year.
Interestingly,
more than half of all TickSpotters reports during September (ya know, larva time) were nymphal stage Lone Star (44%) and blacklegged (deer) ticks (15%) (see chart below). This seems a bit unusual and we’re still trying to determine what could be behind these ticks being so active well beyond their typical season. Nymphal Lone Star ticks can be infected with various pathogens including rickettsias, the unknown agent of STARI (southern tick-associated rash illness), and the causative agent of human monocytic ehrlichiosis,
Ehrlichia chaffeensis. Blacklegged nymphs are the stage to blame for most human cases of Lyme disease because of how small they are.
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Looking Ahead
Adult blacklegged tick season is ramping up, and October and November are when you’ll see them emerge in full force if you live in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and mid-Atlantic regions. They also start to become active throughout the rest of their range in the southeastern and south-central U.S. These ticks differ in host-seeking behavior from their earlier-staged ticks in that they quest (i.e. climb) from the tips of tall grasses and low shrubs, ferns, or green briar and latch on to passing hosts from there. Their main targets are, you guessed it: deer, so they require higher questing sites in order to grab on to the animal’s upper legs as it passes by. This means that adult blacklegged ticks attach to us (the unintentional host) at around the same level, and continue to climb up. If you’ve ever found a tick attached to your head, this is why.
Ticks do not jump or fall from trees, they climb up, and blacklegged adults take advantage of tall grasses to get a head start at this time of year.
Make sure you’re protecting yourself and your pets whenever you’re outdoors. It’s important to remember that dry weather kills blacklegged ticks, but
cold weather certainly does not, and these adult ticks will be around all winter so long as it’s above freezing temperatures and they’re not covered by snow. One particular TickSmart idea to keep in mind as the weather starts to get cooler is to continue to protect your pets with a quick-knockdown tick preventative year round, and not just in the spring and summer. Even if a tick doesn’t bite your pet, it could be
carried into your home and become a risk to you and your family. Tick checks for pets are just as important as for people.
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TickSmart Feature: Have you seen me?
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An update on the invasive Asian longhorned tick
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Engorged adult female (left), unfed adult female (center), and engorged nymph (right) Asian longhorned ticks (
Haemaphysalis longicornis
).
Photo credit: Jim Occi, Rutgers University
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The Asian longhorned tick (
Haemaphysalis longicornis), also known as the East Asian bush tick or cattle tick depending on which country you’re in, burst onto the news scene last year by way of a lone Icelandic sheep on a New Jersey farm. Though this particular animal had spent its entire life on that property, its owner somehow one day found its paddock swarming with a tick species whose native range is throughout eastern Asia, New Zealand, and Australia. Since then, the Asian longhorned tick has popped up on pets and livestock in
New York, Virginia, West Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and most recently on a person in Connecticut. Even though the news reports of this tick makes it sound like a rapidly spreading “outbreak,” the multi-state occurrence rather suggests the tick has been here for some time –some estimates place it here as early as 2010 – and had the chance to establish itself. But many questions remain: how did it get here? Does it carry diseases that can make us sick? What about our pets?
Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly how this new invader arrived in the States, though experts think it may have hitched a ride on dogs being shipped over for adoption in U.S. rescues. We do know though that this particular variety of longhorned ticks is capable of reproducing without a male – a process called
parthenogenesis. That means that a single female longhorned tick is able to mount large population numbers very quickly since she doesn’t have to find a male. Because they can achieve an incredible population size quickly, longhorned ticks pose a threat to livestock because they can easily infest an animal and quite literally bleed it to death.
Since this invasive tick was first recognized in New Jersey, research labs have been testing collected specimens for diseases that they might be able to transmit to people, pets, and livestock. Fortunately, the results so far have all been negative. Throughout Asia the longhorned tick is known to transmit pathogens that cause babesiosis in humans and dogs, ehrlichiosis,
Japanese spotted fever rickettsiosis, bacteria anemia to cattle, and a deadly virus that causes severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) in humans. Researchers are currently working with wild-caught longhorned ticks to create lab colonies in order to test whether this species of tick will be able to acquire and transmit any of the tick-borne diseases circulating in the U.S.
We’re slowly learning about what it means for this particular species to be here, in a different environment than the one in which it evolved. On a
recent field trip to Staten Island, Dr. Tom Mather and Steven Engborg worked with Columbia University postdoctoral fellow Dr. Pilar Fernandez and discovered that larval longhorned ticks clump together on tips of vegetation while waiting for hosts to pass by – a truly unusual observation. Normally, larvae crawl around in leaf litter and attach to hosts that scurry along the ground. This bizarre behavior makes it highly likely that they get picked up by very mobile host animals, and that could help explain why these ticks have been so successful in moving widely throughout the eastern part of the country.
We’ll continue to keep you updated on the Asian longhorned tick situation. In the meantime, if you encounter a tick that you think resembles the one above, please submit a photo to our
TickSpotters program, and you could be helping us track its range and expansion.
You can read more about this tick from our partners at the Northeast Center for Excellence in Vector-borne Disease
here
.
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Answering questions about your tick encounters
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Question:
I recently have noticed a huge increase in ticks after not seeing many all summer. What's going on?
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TERC Answer:
Blacklegged ticks are
seasonal pests
and you just have to know which seasons that they are typically active. The adult stages of this tick begin to become active as the season changes from summer to fall. In the northeastern U.S., these adult stage ticks start to become abundant early in October, and they will remain active through the winter as long as the temperatures are above freezing and the ground is not frozen or covered by snow. The nymphal stage of this tick is active during the late spring and summer. In RI, the summer of 2006 was the second "tickiest" summer in the past 14 years. There were plenty of these
tiny pests
out there, but they are harder to see.
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Check out our TickSmart
products
to find tick identification magnets, tick check reminder shower cards, and other items designed to help you protect you and your family from tick bites.
In what ways are you using these products to educate and empower your community to be tick safe? Let us know! Post to our Facebook or tweet at us with a picture and post with the hashtag
#WeAreTickSmart
. Let’s get a trend going – online and in real life!
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