Warmer winters mean increase in tick population
Mount Allison professor has personal interest in researching ticks, Lyme disease
Dr. Vett Lloyd has a personal interest in researching ticks and Lyme disease.
“My initial interest stemmed from the fact that I encountered a tick or, more accurately, it encountered me,” said the professor of biology at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B.
At the time, Lloyd didn’t know anything about ticks. This one had fed on her for a long time before being noticed and by then she was sick and the road to recovery was a long one.
“Once I was well again, I realized I had a lot of advantages. I work in a university environment; other people were able to tell me what was going on with ticks and they were able to tell me about Lyme disease.”
She decided to take on a summer project, to collect and document ticks, the infection rate and the wildlife that support them.
Six years later, they are getting more and more ticks sent to them. They are promoting awareness of the number of ticks and information on preventative measures.
A new website shows where ticks have been found and projections of where the population will spread (www.maritimetickmaps.ca).
A female tick that has had a large blood meal, over a period of time, can lay up to 5,000 eggs. With harsh winters most of those eggs would die; now that the climate is moderating, more of those eggs are surviving.
“As a result we are getting more and more ticks,” said Lloyd.
When veterinarians or the general public find a tick on a pet or themselves, they mail them to the lab in a baggy with a note telling them where it was found. Lloyd and her students identify them by species, then photograph, dissect and test for Lyme disease by extracting DNA from them.
One of Lloyd’s masters students, Joey Beaton, is also preparing to conduct tests to see if Lyme disease is transmitted without the presence of a tick, by pairing infected lab mice with non-infected mice.
Ticks infect a person by first feeding on an animal in the wild,
like a mouse, that has already been infected. Then after attaching itself to a person, the tick feeds on their blood. As blood is mostly water they push the waste that is now infected with Lyme disease back into the person’s bloodstream
“You’re not only a meal but the tick’s sewer,” is how Lloyd explains it.
With warmer winters people still need to be vigilant. Even if the temperatures are just above freezing, ticks can be active. This means they can pose the same threat as they do during the warm summer months.
“The high-risk areas are the southern third of the province and up the coast,” Lloyd says, for New Brunswick.
In Nova Scotia the climate is a bit milder than New Brunswick’s so ticks are more established there.
“The south is worse than north, the coast is worse than the inland, but it’s Nova Scotia, there’s a lot of coast,” explains Lloyd.
Those who are active outside should check themselves and their pets regularly, to avoid complications that can arise from a tick bite.