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Posts Tagged: ticks
Bohart Museum of Entomology: All That Glitters Is Not Gold...
All that glitters is not gold...think insects! When the Bohart Museum of Entomology hosts an open house on "Household Vampires" from 1 to...
Hanna Briggs, a UC Davis transfer student, holds a sample card showing how glitter mimics insects. She is an intern in the laboratory of arachnologist Jason Bond, the Schlinger Endowed Chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
It Started Out as a Quiet, End-of-the-Year Hike Near Lake Berryessa...
It was a good day for a hike. So Joe Nazarius of Winters embarked on a Dec. 30th hike in the Knoxville Road area, west of Lake...
This is the tick buried in the skin of Winters' resident Joe Nazarius. It's black-legged nymph tick, Ixodes pacificus, as identified by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. (Photo by Debra LoGuercio DeAngelo)
First page of information on ticks, Bohart Museum newsletter, Winter 2018
Second of two pages of information on ticks, Bohart Museum newsletter, Winter 2018
Fact sheet on ticks, written by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology
Those Amazing Ticks: And How Hungry Ticks Work Harder to Find You
They ticked me off. Ticks can do that to you. I never think about ticks during the holiday season, but a news release from the University of...
Two Dermacentor occidentalis (Pacific Coast ticks) "collected" during a Sonoma outing: male on the left and female on right, as identified by Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. They are about the size of a sesame seed. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
It Will Be a Parasite Palooza at the Bohart Museum Open House
How much do you know about ticks? How much do you know about nematodes? What would you like to know? You'll be able to learn more about both, plus...
Nematologists Corwin Parker (at microscope) and Lauren Camp (back of him) participated in the 2016 UC Davis Museum Diversity Day. Camp, who received her doctorate in entomology in December from UC Davis, is organizing a display for the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house on Jan. 22. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Ticks!
Has anyone else been seeing more ticks this year than usual? I don’t know if it is the year for them or the different tick medicine we are using on our dog but this year has been bad. It was pretty standard for our dog to bring in maybe 3-4 ticks in a given season but this year we see that almost everyday. The tick that is most common in our area is the western-blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus), and yes, it does transmit Lyme disease. The UC IPM pest note on Lyme disease (http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7485.html) states that only 1 to 2% of adult ticks are carriers of the spirochete that causes Lyme disease. Oddly enough the rates go up to 2 to 15% in the tick nymphs. I thought it was strange that the younger ticks had a higher infection rate till I saw a study out of UC Berkeley that might explain it. Apparently the tick nymphs regularly feed on the common western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis), which has something in its blood, which not only protects the lizard from infection, but also actually kills the spirochete in the young tick. So an infected tick bites a lizard and the tick is cleansed of its infection. How cool is that? Here is a link to the article:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/0429/lizard.html . If you have some time, it is certainly worth reading!
The good news is that according to the UC IPM website, the ticks seem most active in spring to midsummer and that the nymphs are especially susceptible to the heat! So, if you are like me in longing for a break in the heat, you can take some comfort in the knowledge that at least the ticks are suffering right along with us.
Different stages of the western blacklegged tick
The heroic common western fence lizard!
