Jerome Goddard, Ph.D., extension professor of medical entomology at Mississippi State University, has studied ticks and other insect and arthropod vectors of disease in Mississippi for more than 30 years. “It was just stunning to me” that adult blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) were collected in multiple locations in the state between June and September 2022, the time of year when previously only larvae or nymphs were found. “And I think any tick person in the whole southern United States would say ‘Whoa!’  because we’ve never, ever seen the adults in the summer.”