dragging for ticks: study at acadia university will look for tick hot spots, pathogens and what they're feeding on
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acadia university biology professor laura ferguson is leading a study looking at tick populations around the province, along with what they are feeding on, how they are spreading and more.
ian fairclough
/
the chronic le herald
student researchers have been walking the woods of nova scotia this spring and summer collecting ticks in the first year of a five-year study designed to provide more information on what the parasites are doing and where.
laura ferguson, a professor in acadia university’s biology department, is leading the project. she said students are dragging one-metre-square white flannel sheets while walking along paths.
“we drag them through leaf litter and grassy areas and small shrubbery,” ferguson said.
the students will walk a 300-metre stretch, stopping every 25 metres to collect any ticks that have attached themselves to the blanket.
“we’re mainly looking for the black-legged ticks; we’re also collecting dog ticks, which are the two main species that we find,” said ferguson.
they’re collecting at as many sites as they can across mainland nova scotia. cape breton’s tick populations are lower so it isn’t part of the initial year of the study because of cost and time constraints.
the students are targeting walking trails where people would be out regularly, and drag each site every two weeks.
“all of that is going to tell us a lot about how much variation there is in tick abundance across different locations across the province,” ferguson said.
“all of those ticks will get tested for the pathogens that they might be carrying, and then we can look to see if there are differences in the level of those pathogens in different parts of the province.”
these ticks are some of the more than 2,000 collected recently from trails in nova scotia in the first year of a multi-year study into tick distribution, pathogen levels and feeding habits around nova scotia.
ian fairclough
/
the chronicle herald
she said they expect to find some variation and can use that information to update the province’s public health agency about higher-risk areas.
after that, the team will try to figure out why there are variations.
“we’re also going to be looking for trace remnants of dna in the ticks left over from the last blood meal that they took, and see if the feeding patterns – mice, squirrel deer, birds and so on – vary across the province.”
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that could also help identify where it’s more likely that there are certain types of pathogens.
progress to date
more than 2,000 ticks have been collected so far, with some sites having more than others.
“some of the classic regions that you might expect to have a lot of ticks, like the south shore, have more,” ferguson said. “there are lots of sites there with a lot.”
the eastern shore is an area with lower numbers.
“we don’t know yet (why), but that’s part of what we’re looking into,” said ferguson.
“certainly i’m always cautious to talk about something with only one year of data. we’d like to have several years.”
the horseshoe park walking trail at bayers lake.
the research team is also getting some ticks that the department of natural resources collected while doing deer pellet counts in the spring.
“that should give us a nice overlay of deer abundance, their tick collections and our tick collections so we can also look to see if there are relationships between the abundance of deer and abundance of ticks in certain regions,” ferguson said.
“we can also then look at the spread of the ticks and certain climate variables and land cover variables.”
that can help determine whether certain types of land and climate are affecting tick numbers and lead to trying to figure out what might drive higher tick populations or the prevalence of certain pathogens. all the information collected can be used to influence public education, tick mitigation plans and more.
long-term goals
ferguson said she’s hoping the study can extend to 10 years to collect more data and properly assess numbers and prevalence.
once the ticks come back to the lab they are flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen to preserve molecules in them and then sent to the canadian tick research and innovation centre, which just opened at acadia this spring.
there is a lot ferguson hopes the study can determine, including where and how far ticks go from the edge of paths when they aren’t trying to latch on to a host.
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most of the testing will be on black-legged ticks but some will also happen on dog ticks.
no lone star ticks have been found in the dragging, but that’s not surprising because they aren’t believed to be able to survive canadian winters at this point.
“i’m not surprised to see lone star ticks from time to time, we do have reports on (internet data site) etick,” ferguson said.
“they’re coming in on things like migratory birds or pets that travel, so seeing them occasionally is not surprising, but we have no evidence of established populations.”
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