Tickology: Tick Identification and Ecology - YouTube

hi I'm Larry Dapsis I'm the entomologist with Cape Cod Cooperative Extension and

in this segment we're going to look at the basic identification characteristics

for the three principal ticks that you might encounter here on Cape Cod or for

southeastern Massachusetts in general first of all we have the good old

American dog tick and for people in baby boomer generation like myself tick

identification was easy this was the tick we grew up with there

were no other ticks they we didn't have deer ticks or Lonestar or other things

so this is kind of easy to identify even though there are other species so on the

far right that's an adult male and they have dark brown coloring and these

creamy beige lines we don't worry so much about the male adult male ticks

because they basically don't feed it's these female ticks you don't female so

again she has this creamy bright wide spot here and that makes it pretty easy

to distinguish from other ticks this is a new player on Cape Cod this is the

Lone Star tick and the adult male on the far left that's pretty easy it's makes

basically all black that adult female very characteristic that bright white

spot on the middle of her back the other way to distinguish these ticks from

other ticks is that relative speed these guys can run so one like the ticks were

used to encountering the kind of slow and lumber along these guys are like

little racecars and this thing has been moving northward for some time now

a lot of ecologists including myself think this is a function of climate

change we're seeing plants and animals where we never used to see them before

and up until say 2012 the northernmost points of detected populations was

really on the islands of nausia and Cuttyhunk Martha's Vineyard Nantucket

but not year 2012 I was called out to Sandy Neck beach park that's a six mile

long peninsula it's basically a barrier each and they were seeing some different

kind of tick and they weren't sure what was going on here so I went out and

looked and I found Lone Star tick from one end of that place to the other so

they basically own that piece of real estate and so that's just to me that

it's been on that Peninsula for some time we don't know how long and in fall

of 2017 I was called out to West Falmouth the shining sea bike trail

I found another established population out there so this thing has been found

now in different parts of the Cape it basically is quite happy here and we

have a separate segment on Lone Star tick then we'll talk more about the

ecological reasons for for their presence now here's the deer tick family

portrait the proper name or more accurate name for this tick is really

the black legged tick and we'll get to some reasons for that in a minute on the

far right that's an adult female so basically the head area is basically

shiny black and the very characteristic bright red abdomen again the males are

very dark almost black and again we don't worry about the adult males now

the immature stages the nymphs and the larvae they're kind of hard to identify

by the naked eye if you have a very small tick on you during the summer

months just by virtue of population size of deer ticks versus other ticks it's

likely to be a deer tick but the best way to do is send it in for me to put it

under a microscope and I can identify it in a couple seconds now the relative

size of these ticks is something we try and give people in an analogy using

bagel toppings just how large is an adult stage deer tick how large is a

nymph stage tick well that adult stage tick they're about the size of a sesame

seed so they're fairly large readily seen but that nymph stage tick is the

size of a poppy seed so something the size of a poppy seed what eight legs a

bad attitude and can plant you on your behind for a long time now why the name

deer tick is a misnomer this thing has been documented to be associated with a

hundred and twenty-five different ver great host so it's not just about deer

it's not just about mice this is a very complex ecosystem there's a lot of

moving parts the rodents are very important here the mice the chipmunks

squirrels the rats they're what we call competent hosts and what we mean by

competency is that these animals have the ability to harbor the Lyme disease

bacteria and transmit it back into the tick population so it's kind of like

microbial ping-pong birds play a role in a couple different ways we already

talked about birds as you know being able to move ticks around great

distances but there are some birds that are reservoir hosts this Lyme disease

bacteria including songbirds like our American Robin and our good old friend

the wild turkey then we've got a bunch creatures they're incompetent hosts okay

the deer the raccoons the coyotes they cannot infect a tick okay

that's that's a misunderstanding okay it's just bad information but what they

can do is supply blood meal and keep that tick population rolling along the

winters okay I get calls from people all the time including the media Larry we

had a harsh winter what did that do to the tick population and I tell them my

answer is the same as last year in the air before it did absolutely nothing and

winners here in Cape Cod I really all that harsh now it's a matter of

perspective when I worked in the cranberry industry I spent 24 years

traveling in Wisconsin we rose known by the name Asia now Wisconsin has real

winters 25 below zero for extended periods of time is not all that unusual

and Wisconsin deer ticks are very healthy and Wisconsin's quite endemic

for Lyme disease and the reason for this is very fascinating ticks synthesize a

chemical called glycerol well what the heck is cholesterol well these things

make antifreeze okay so ticks have adapted over millions

of years they've seen it all they've lived through the ice age and the way

this glycerol works is it prevents ice crystal formation and cell

so if you have an ice crystal form in a cell it punctures the cell wall

whatever's inside the cell leaks out of the cell that's not good

and they also discovered that Lyme disease bacteria feeds on the glycerol

as a source of energy for itself so this is one perfectly engineered little

package quite fascinating from a scientific standpoint tick habitat yeah

tall grass especially if it's under tree canopy so shade higher humidity lower

temperatures that is absolutely perfect to Kabat at but also if you look around

your house okay surveillance research at connected AG

Experiment Station demonstrated that two-thirds of the people that sent ticks

into them for identification and testing got them from outdoor yard activities so

things like ticks and gardening go hand in hand and so for deer ticks you're not

gonna find them out in an open lawn okay short grass direct sunlight higher

temperatures that's just a hostile environment for ticks but you get to a

transition zone so the edge of the yard that might be in partial shade and that

transitions to bushes trees leaf litter lower temperatures higher humidity

that's where you're gonna find the ticks but if you think about that what do you

ornamental plantings around the sides of your house that's tick habitat as well

so you have to be careful of that so here's my contact information

I'm always open for business look forward to your calls or answering your

emails and we would like to thank Cape Cod healthcare for their generous

support of this project