The latest news about entomology, brought to you by the Entomological Society of America
By Leslie Mertz If you have ever found a deer tick crawling on your shirt or sock, you know how difficult they can be to spot. Adult females are about the size of a small freckle and nearly as flat (at least until they begin feeding and plumping up on your blood), and immature ticks—the […]
Ticks have been pathogen-carrying parasites for a very, very long time. A new discovery in a specimen of fossilized amber, roughly 15 million to 20 million years old, reveals a tick encased adjacent to mammalian blood cells infected with microbes resembling those in the order Piroplasmida. Today, related pathogens are known to cause Babesiosis and […]
An emerging tool in the fight against tick-borne disease, host-targeted bait boxes employ a sneaky trick: turning some of ticks’ favorite carriers —small mammals like mice and chipmunks —against them. And a new study in Journal of Medical Entomology shows an improved design has made such bait boxes an increasingly viable addition to integrated tick […]
By Josh Lancette Lyme disease has been spreading across the United States over the past several decades, and a new study has confirmed that ticks carrying the disease are present in eastern national parks. According to the study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and […]
The Entomological Society of America (ESA) recently released a statement (http://www.entsoc.org/ticks) supporting the creation and implementation of a national strategy using Integrated Tick Management to better control tick populations and reduce the rapidly escalating impact of tick-borne diseases such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, and Lyme disease. “The rapid rise in tick-borne diseases is […]
