![]() ![]() “We’re looking for movement on the drag or the body shape amongst all these seeds,” he said. “The adults later in the fall are less likely to dry out, so they are more likely to be found in the edge habitat and they will quest a little bit higher.”Īfter pulling the white felt-covered sled along the leaf litter, Boyer turns it over and immediately scans the bottom for signs of larval or nymphal-stage ticks. That is where they are going to quest,” said Boyer. “Ticks are very sensitive to drying out, so we target an area where they are going to be low to the ground. The active environmental tick survey for nymphal blacklegged ticks involves pulling a small sled-like structure under the canopy of trees in the leaf litter without a lot of understory vegetation. “There are a whole lot of other environmental factors we are investigating as to why we might see these fluctuations in ticks.” “There could have been a higher rat population last year, so that increases the number of rodents in the population which could give way to a larger nymphal tick population,” he said. “It is important to keep things in perspective, but we are seeing an increase in tick numbers and some of that is due to warmer winters when blacklegged ticks can be active all winter when conditions are right.”īoyer has collected ticks in conditions as low as the mid-20-degree mark, and while warmer winters play a role in those numbers increasing, there are other theories.
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