Ologies with Alie Ward - Acarology (TICKS) with Neeta Pardanani Connally

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

Ticks: They’re tiny. They’re thirsty. They’re drooling vectors of various illnesses and they want nothing more than to cuddle up to your darkest crevices. In the episode, learn how to remove a tick, if you should spray your yard and with what, how landscaping affects tick exposure, why Lyme Disease is spreading, the Lone Star Tick rolling into town, how to protect your pets and why the CC ruined poppyseed muffins. Acarologist, medical entomologist and tick expert Dr. Neeta Pardanani Connally chats with me from her West Connecticut State University Tick Lab to discuss al of these things and to charm her way into your heart like a hypostome under your skin. Follow Dr. Neeta Pardanani Connally at:Twitter.com/tickLabInstagram.com/TickLabHer website: wcsuticklab.comA donation was made to TickEncounter.orgHer videos are up at SpraySafePlaySafe.orgSponsor links: bioliteenergy.com/ologies (code: Ologies); KiwiCo.com/ologies; LinkedIn.com/Ologies; Storyworth.com/ologies More links at alieward.com/ologies/acarologyYou Are That podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/00WJ2qzCeIeetwRy23ABEZBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologiesFollow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWardSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Hey, so just a quick note up top of apologies. Sorry, this one is up a little bit later than usual I know we're probably about 12 to 24 hours behind on the posting but I just had a really really bananas couple of weeks with a loved one in the hospital and my wallet got stolen and Also, I was moving and doing a couple of different shoots for Netflix and such Just had a couple of surprises the last couple weeks. So I'm a little bit behind So sorry, this is going up late, but you can expect it at its normal time next week Also, if you're hearing this before June 7th, and you're in the LA area I will be at the Natural History Museum's first Fridays doing a live

Allergies Q&A with a curator there. So if you're in LA come to first Fridays. Say hello to me. That's on June 7th Okay. Oh, hey, it's that sweatshirt who's so flattered that you've worn it three days in a row But it's starting to get concerned for you. Allie Ward back with another episode ofologies You know, there are a few episodes that I've started off just letting you know I wasn't so sure about something please see dinosaurs Scorpions and cats because I'm just I'm really a dog person but I ended up Loving those things and subjects because what it boils down to is to know something is to respect it to respect it is

To appreciate it and this episode is ticks. Will I love them? Well, just listen, but first listen to me Thanks, some people namely the folks at patreon.com Allergies for making the show possible by giving as little as a Quarter an episode to ask questions and see behind-the-scenes info also Thank you to everyone getting Allergies merch and tagging your Instagram photos Allergies merch so I can repost them Thanks to everyone who just gasses me up on the weekly by subscribing and rating the podcast and for reviewing Which I shamelessly creep and appreciate and this week p.s. Hasheed said honestly

I wanted to make a lot of environmentally friendly changes in my life I just never got around to it this podcast single-handedly Accelerated me to purchase reusable bags reusable saran wrap and produce bags Volunteer my engineering talents to earth saving needs Spread the news about sustainable practices and infinite other responsible practices in like a couple months So they say thank you for accelerating me towards changing our world. Huh. Thank you. Let's not stick straws up turtle noses deal deal, okay Acarology acronology

I'll figure it out, but it comes from the Greek acari, which means cheese might or tick Which comes for the word for tiny p.s. Side note I just was like cheese might and I just found out that there are certain mites that live on the outside of cheese Some folks eat them because they impart kind of a floral earthy flavor. So now we all know something about cheese mites Okay ticks ticks and mites are arachnids like spiders But in the subclass acari and tick nymphs have six legs But they have a glow-up and they molt and then boom adults have not six legs But eight an extra pair of legs just waiting to hug and kiss you and by that I mean cling to you and drink your life

Juices with its stabby dirty mouth. I love bugs So much but ticks and cockroaches are two that I just I have a beef with I want to love them But their existence in my personal space is just a one-way ticket to barf city But this was a topic that we should all know more about and I saw this ologist work via Twitter a tick expert based in Connecticut I gently DM'd her hoping our schedules would align and sadly They did not for a face-to-face meetup and y'all know me I'd rather bro down in the same room than have like an echo e-phone talk

But this all it just was wonderful and recorded her side of the conversation into our computer And though the sound quality isn't the same as if we were chitchatting in the same room in a Hampton Inn It's totally clear and this information is timely as hell. So the weather's getting warmer in the US Hemlines are crawling upward Lawns are flourishing. We all need to know what the hell's going on with ticks now We talk about ticks in this episode where they live where they lurk how to detect them how dangerous they are bug sprays conspiracy theories and what to do if you find one on you this ologist is a medical entomologist and associate professor of biology at West Connecticut State University

Where she runs the tick-borne disease prevention lab which focuses on the prevention of Lyme Other tick-borne infections which according to many reports have just risen very sharply So how can we stop them from spreading? How do we outsmart these buggy buggers? So ticks? What is their deal? Why do they want to kill us or are they just like shoot? I was just hungry. I'm so sorry Dang it side note when it comes to the infections themselves There's an amazing disease ecologist in San Francisco who studies things you can catch from a tick and y'all Dad Ward is over here just doing her best to interview her this week and make this a two-parter

So stay tuned cross some fingers But for now the first step is understanding the life cycle and the bitey habits and the mind of the tick this info is Critical so tuck your pants in your socks and get ready. It's about time for some tick talk with Dr. Nita Pardinani Connolly So Thank you so much for talking to me. I'm so excited to talk about ticks. You have no idea thrilled I'm excited too. Do you tell people straight off the bat that you work with ticks? Are you excited at cocktail parties to be like guess what I work on?

Actually, yeah, I used to do that and now I I try not to You know any chance I get I will talk about it, but I try not to lead with that I think I learned a long time ago, you know, sometimes it's not always what people want to talk about Really? Yeah, I think people would be dying to just milk you for information Well, I mean it may it may have come from a childhood experience. I had with talking about Head lice at the dinner table at a friend's house Learning it was not happen. Did you have them? Oh, yeah, so actually so I was about eight years old and my My brother and I got sent home from school with head lice and my mom

she's a pathologist and She was like, oh cool So she had a microscope in her bedroom Which didn't seem weird to me at the time and she you know found an adult You know head louse in my brother's hair and she took it out and put it under the scope and we got to look at it I was like, this is amazing. And so, you know, not that long afterwards I went to my best friend's house for dinner and I start telling them about this, you know Close-up view of my head louse

It was holding on to the hair and it was kind of these little hairs hanging off of it It was the coolest and I was shut down. I learned very quickly that it was uncool and it was not dinner time conversation It's stuck with me. I think for quite some time Did you get invited back anytime? I did I learned a lot at that friend's house I you know, my parents are from India and I didn't learn how to you know, eat spaghetti with a fork properly I didn't know what mayonnaise was until I was So it was yeah, thank goodness for that friend

I learned a lot about how to be behave. I Think a lot of us don't really know what mayonnaise is to be honest. Your memoir needs to be head lice and mayonnaise So right now is that is a head louse. Is that a mite? No, it's a louse. I'm a type of mite. No, I might know it's not and so I it's a it's a different organism Then okay, I might a mites and ticks are related lice are totally different. Oh, I didn't know that Okay, so when did you start? When did you decide to start studying bugs? Oh, well, so I Think the way that it the best describe how this sort of evolved was when I was a biology major and Everyone in my family

basically as a medical doctor and I think there was this expectation that that I would head that direction and you know I'm interested in human health, but I took this parasite biology class in college and It was very cool. So human parasites. So, you know worms and you know things that live inside But also things that live outside, you know ectoparasites and so I Thought it was really amazing and so interesting and then I went on to do pursue a graduate degree in parasite biology And it turns out a lot of the parasites that you know are found inside people are transmitted by Insects and and arthropods like like ticks and so it just sort of evolved in that way

So I found myself living in a place where black-legged ticks were ubiquitous and And so it really just felt felt very natural to be able to study to start studying these these organisms And were you raised in Connecticut or did you go there for school? I did not I was raised in upstate, New York outside of Albany and And so that is where I started my tick journey little background Nita got her bachelors in animal biology from Louisiana Tech a Masters in public health studying human Parasitology from Tulane University in New Orleans and then went on to earn a PhD in

Environmental science focusing on medical entomology from the University of Rhode Island She's also been an associate research scientist at the Connecticut emerging Infections program at Yale School of Public Health woman knows ticks really the work that I've been doing Related to ticks since 1998 has been in the northeastern United States. Wow, which is the place for them. Yeah Well, yes, the black-legged tick for sure the deer tick And now have you heard of the term? Have you heard of the word? Acronologist does anyone ever call you that? Acrologist. Yes. Yes, I Have like one job here and that is to furnish theologies

But sometimes despite having them on my radar for years. I just boom oops can't remember what they are So I just did the equivalent of when your dad doesn't know a band name But tries to act like he does so just quietly mortified, but we're gonna move on I don't normally call myself An acrologist, but I guess I technically I would be I tend to call myself a medical entomologist entomology being the study of insects and arthropods and the medical piece being the part about where these these Organisms are important for causing disease in humans and now getting to what is a tick?

Obviously, it's an arthropod But can you be more specific about what makes a tick a tick? I am the tick and how did they get that way? Oh How did they get that? Okay, so what makes it tick a tick a tick is an organism. That's sort of a cousin of spiders It's also related to two mites and it is distinguished from Insects meaning it is not an insect by some some key features Whereas an insect would have three body segments and six legs

Ticks do not have three body segments They really have one major body segment and then they have this sort of head area at least in the tick that I study and It's called a basis captitulum and and ticks in most stages have eight legs a similar to their their spider and mite cousins Quick aside, isn't it weird that every tick has grandparents and cousins like every bug you see has uncles anyway, they are Parasitic and so they they require a blood meal in order to carry out their life cycle Just the words Just it feels definitely like they're a tiny tiny villain in a story

Do do we just know them as villains or are ticks good for anything? Well, I mean in the general, you know Ecosystem The ticks will serve as food sources for you know other organisms like Birds will eat them for example, but if you're asking me, you know Would our world be okay if we eradicated all the ticks? You know, I don't know the answer to that I I personally really admire ticks very much Of course, I don't want people to become sick

But I think they're really if you if you learn a little bit about them You can kind of admire how they've evolved to be pretty sneaky and although they are the villain like, you know They do a really good job at it What are some of the things that you admire about ticks and how they go about doing their business? Okay, well the tick that I primarily study is the black-legged tick and many people call that the deer tick and it is a very like hardy Animal right so it can survive, you know in in temperate regions of of the United States in the northeast and in the upper Midwest and So it can sustain very cold temperatures like it can live in, you know, Minnesota and Wisconsin where it's very cold

It can live for a long time under the snow It lives for a long time this particular tick has a two-year life cycle two years granted I have refrigerator mustard older than that, but still that's 24 of your periods That's two Hanukkahs That's a longer lifespan than some pairs of shoes or the span of getting a master's degree So just think you could meet someone fall in love Move in together fall out of love Break up and maybe be over it and there's still a tick out there that was on the planet for all of it

That was sadder than I intended, but whatever it's kind of hard to kill this tick and On top of that when it is when we think of it as a Parasite as something that you know requires a host in order to carry out its life cycle It really has it, you know Evolved to have these features that makes it go You know undetected so this tick in particular and many tick species will feed for several days on a whole Host and so if you think about a mosquito, you know, it lands it takes a quick blood meal and by the time you realize It's there, you know, you've swatted it away

And so, you know when a tick has to feed on a host for several days It doesn't want to be detected right so it has this saliva that is full of all sorts of Components that can fight the host immune system So you you don't typically when you're being a host for a tick you may not feel it You won't feel itchy don't feel pain Because it has in its in its saliva that has albazo dilators. It has anti coagulation Factors, it's got these substances that really can protect it and also it it keeps your blood from clotting And so you can it can just start pulling in that that blood very effectively

Okay, so just a little aside on why they are tiny creepy vampires So many tick species need a blood meal to get to its next Lifestage kind of like a video game leveling up only they are detecting your breath your odors and your movement and sometimes Crawling on vegetation and out stretching their top two legs waiting to hug you. This very thirsty behavior is known as questing And I hereby think it should be applied to humans who go out looking for a sugar mama or a money daddy or a non Binary Bucks fuck that last one could use some workshopping any who's all they find some skin They cut you like a bitch and then they stick their straw face in you Sometimes using cement like saliva to tack it down like hot glue on a bad craft project

So their saliva might contain a few Thousand proteins that do everything from and nest the ties you to administer like an anti-inflammatory So your skin doesn't freak out and tattle that you are being used as a blood buffet Did I mention that they can get engorged with your blood? 200 to 300 times their original weight Can you imagine what a boss you'd be if you could hose a soup plantation like that for the price of one meal like pay 1599 and walk out of there weighing 4,000 pounds and just set for the winter ticks do that. They don't even pay the price of admission

They sneak in the back while you blinked. I mean respect and so it's it's pretty good And it's not to say all people don't have a reaction to tick bites because some people have quite a reaction particularly after they've been bitten several times But the fact that it can go on undetected and particularly the adult stage ticks that are pretty large It's pretty amazing Yeah, it's kind of like the stealth bomber of tiny parasols Totally under the radar and now you mentioned adults versus little guys and I understand that the nymphs are the size of a poppy seed Okay, so quick background on this I mentioned this in the epidemiology episode with the doctors Aaron of this podcast will kill you. Hey ladies

so the CDC to really viscerally appallingly Delightfully illustrate how tiny ticks are put three little baby tick nymphs on a big like softball size Costco poppy seed muffin and it wasn't until the third Confused zoom in that you could even see their little leggies us Americans not always fans of truth and consequences Shamed the CDC into taking it down But I like to burn the image into your brain not to ruin muffins But to make you just stop and think if I had a poppy seed

Somewhere on my body right now Would I even know and as a person who got ranch dressing on her face? Hours ago. I'm in a wager. I know here buddies So they're very tiny right now in terms of their life cycle are a lot of the little guys out in the spring Is there a higher risk of tick bites in in this time of year? Yeah, so the way that it works is there's three main stages There's the larval stage which usually feeds on small mammals and birds and then there's the nymph stage Which you said is the size of about a poppy seed and actually we put them under the microscope here in the lab Because we were like are they really the size of a poppy seed?

Yeah, and they actually they are approximately the size of a poppy seed But truly the poppy seed is easier to see I see, you know, it's a little bit darker than a nymph stage black-legged tick and And you know the coloration is more uniform So it really is maybe easier to see a poppy seed than to see the nymph stage tick But the tick in its nymph stage in this region in the northeastern United States and in the upper Midwest where it's most common are Typically active most active in the spring and early summer months So we really see them start coming out in May and then really picking up after Memorial Day with their activity peaking in the early a few weeks of June and then you know slowly

You know subsiding as we get into the end of July and it's not to say that you couldn't find a nymph during other months of the year You certainly can we collected some nymphs in October last year But they're most active during the spring and early summer months And is that when most people who get a tick-borne illness will contract it or does that happen? You know pretty much all through the temperate months. Yes So most cases of Lyme disease and some of the other diseases that are associated with black-legged tick bites occur You know during the time or shortly after the time when the black-legged tick nymph stage is active So spring and summer we see cases into August and September

but with that said the adult stage of tick which is active in the fall and In the spring and even in the winter when the weather is above, you know freezing that tick also can can transmit infectious agents to humans and actually is twice as likely to be infected than the nymphs But the thing about nymphs is that they're out during the time of year that more people tend to be recreating outside And also they're very tiny and that the adults are a little bit easier to spot. So yeah, it's kind of just you know It's bad luck for us, but good luck for the tick in terms of their timing of activity Okay, so adult ticks bigger and more Lyme and disease-ridden Nymphs less Lyme, but it's more likely you'll find one in a crevice in spring because no one is out in November

Picnicking at an outdoor concert series or making out with a tinder date in a park or heading to the woods to cook over a fire Or making an appearance in a speedo trying to get that D. That's sweet sweet vitamin D So what about flim flamery? Is there any that Nita would just like to take to the mat and debunk? Yes, thank you for this opportunity Ticks do not fly they don't jump they don't hop Right, so you hear a lot of people saying that the ticks are falling out of the trees under their heads and so that is Unlikely to happen. Well, they're on the vegetation You know when they're look when they're the smaller stages are looking for mice and birds and they're kind of low to the ground and then the adult

Sages are looking for deer and they tend to crawl up a little higher on the vegetation to find a deer And then they'll crawl upward on People until they find a good spot. So if you find a tick on your head It it probably found you somewhere lower on your body and crawled upward and it didn't fall out of a tree So that is something that I think is often misunderstood No I think that's the big one in that and that and leaving the head end

We don't really leave the whole head in just the feeding tube when you when you remove a tick and and I think just getting removing it is the most important thing. So even if you leave a little piece of the mouth parts Better than leaving the tick attached, right? Do you ever look at dr. Pimple Popper? Oh my gosh Funny you mentioned that because I actually don't really watch TV and recently and we had a friend over and it was late in the night And they decided to show us this and it was really something. Wow, that's disgusting There was this one little video she posted where she's like, yeah I was treating a patient dermatology patient and his girlfriend was like, hey, can you check out this growth?

We had it for a couple days and she looked and it was like a fully engorged dog tick Oh, wow, just floopy flopping off of her abdomen and Dr. Pimple Popper was like, yeah, that's a tick, but I guess she just thought it was a new mole. Wow Well, so that so that surprises me a little bit just because You know adult ticks particularly dog ticks are quite big and particularly when they're in Gorge I mean think of like a raisinette. That's really what they look like to me Yes, sorry if I ruined raisinettes for you forever But I you know, I they do that's if you put an engorged female deer tick next to a raisinette

They're almost hard to tell apart and I and I that's how big it is If you had one of those hanging off your ear abdomen, I think that would be at least for me would be alarming See the head right there and this is the body here with the feet So we need to try to pick it up I Sorry, am I hurting you? God that thing was on tight But you know with nymphs even when they're engorged with blood, you know, they're still very small and and

So I think that you know not being able to detect one or no or just think it's like a flak of dirt Is very common. Mm-hmm. I do love the CDC poppy seed muffin comparison That was great. I was so bummed when they had to take it down people were grossed out I was like, you know, I'll see I love that I also think that that was great and very effective and I know it maybe ruined poppy seed muffins for some people But I thought it really just drives home the point and the visual of like this is what you're looking for so So maybe we can we can bring back the poppy seed muffin It's better to be grossed out for 30 seconds on Twitter by a poppy seed muffin than to be you know putting yourself at risk

What's the best way to not get bitten by one? Is it repellent? Is it wearing just a wetsuit? So unfortunately and you know the 40 years since Lyme disease was first described, you know right here in the state of Connecticut We you know, haven't really done a super job at getting people to prevent disease In fact, the number of cases in the nation has been growing rather than rather than Subsiding but what we we do know from from many research studies is that there are some things that may be protective Against Lyme disease specifically. So for example, we know that in a couple of studies performing bodily tick checks Frequently can be protective against Lyme disease. So that is inspecting your body and that's includes your entire body

So particularly the cracks and the crevices and the you know Yeah, well, right. So because the tick will crawl up, right? So it'll probably it'll find its host It'll be waiting on the vegetation for a host to walk by and so it may you may encounter it at your leg But if there's no skin showing there, it will keep walking up until it finds some skin So that might mean it will crawl under your shirt and into your armpit Or up into your hair behind ears We find a lot of them at places that are you know constricted by say a bra strap or you know underwear

waistbands those kinds of things and so Performing a tick check is a good idea and actually performing one daily is a great idea because The Lyme causing tick the blackling a tick is unlikely to transmit the bacteria that causes Lyme If it's been attached less than 24 hours. Oh Okay, so this is amazing news There is a magical window an almost Biological grace period in which you are less likely to have one of these tiny bastards drool a disease into your blood So take a moment to just

Feel yourself all around get comfy with a hand mirror Also, you can do this one thing that people on the bus might appreciate as well Yeah, so the other thing you can do and there's a couple of studies that support this is take a bath or shower Shortly after coming inside from being outside so that could work in a couple of ways so you could be Washing off ticks that haven't yet attached if the tick is attached you you know, it's not going to wash off Unfortunately, it will stay there. The water will not do anything to deter it But if you haven't it hasn't attached you could maybe wash it off. You're also removing the clothes That you're wearing that may have ticks crawling upon them

And another thing you can do and this is all this sort of personal protective measures You can take you can take your clothing after you've been outside and put it right in the dryer There was a study that showed that if you put the clothes directly into the dryer and dry them on high heat for 10 minutes It should kill the ticks that are crawling upon them What do you do when you're out in field season and your job is literally to get yourself close to like a tick bomb and just Drag layers of cloth through tick-infested weeds like what do you what do researchers do? Do you just cover yourselves and like deep what happens? Yeah, well, so in my case I might my goal is to get as many ticks as possible

So I don't cover myself indeed at all In fact in you know when I'm sampling for adult ticks I find that I'm more effective using my body as a method to count to collect ticks than to use a Flannel tick drag or a flag which is what we use typically to collect nymph stage ticks And so, you know our field staff. I of course want to keep everyone very safe They wear long sleeve white coveralls that zip up to the neck they tuck their pants in long white socks and Depending on the study that we're doing oftentimes. We have those coveralls. They are treated with products that contains permi-thrin which is a

Pestis it acts as a pesticide and also a repellent which we know is very effective at Repelling and killing ticks or knocking them down. And so you actually can buy this This stuff to put on your own clothing and it's great because it lasts through many washings So it's a it's called permi-thrin and you can you can either buy a retail clothing item That is already factory impregnated with permi-thrin or you can buy the spray Usually you can find it at camping and hiking sort of resell retailers Okay, side note I know all about this chemical because I was covered in a constellation of red itchy bumps in Hawaii last November

And I spent most of my time in paradise Convinced I had scabies and rubbing this formula on me just in case turns out it wasn't scabies just mosquitoes But now I have half a tube of this in my medicine cabinet, and I just hope no one discovers and Googles it I feel like we're closer now that I've shared anyway It's a synthetic form of compounds found in chrysanthemums and it acts by disrupting nerve cell membranes Causing paralysis and death of some ticks and mites and other bugs You can also just mist it on your cargo shorts and not on your actual body But rubbing some fresh mums down your pants likely will not do the trick

It also wouldn't hurt if you wanted to and you can spray say you have gardening clothes or clothes you do Yard work in you can spray that and those can be the clothes you wear outside But typically we don't you know, we don't we want the ticks so we just are you know have eagle eyes we check one another after being at each field site and And we do it that way before my children, you know, I have two kids and and everybody knows that tick checking is part of our Daily routine sometimes multiple tick checks a day and taking a bath or shower particularly this time of year Everybody bathes Daily and I highly recommend that and that's not you know, there's all sorts of landscaping

Things that you can do in your backyard, but you know taking a bath or shower is really, you know It doesn't cost a lot. We like it when people bathe. That's not controversial. It's easy to do Well, it depends on if you're depressed, but yes, that should be easy. Yes, okay Have you ever gotten bitten by a tick? Oh, sure. Absolutely. I've been bitten many times by ticks over the years and It's a I think a hazard of the occupation and now you obviously you study Lyme disease Which is such a huge issue right now Have you ever worried that you have contracted Lyme disease or what are your personal feelings about it? Oh, well, certainly Lyme disease is a very important human disease

And everyone should who lives in an area where these ticks are prevalent should be aware and and really try to prevent it Now for myself, so I don't know if you call this lucky or unlucky. I've In my life, I've always been extremely sensitive to the bites of many different kinds of arthropods So I have a severe allergy to Many types of stinging bees fire ants. I can't mosquitoes I have very poor reaction and so even with ticks when they as I think as soon as they Attach and start to salivate which they do to anchor themselves into the skin before they even start to take blood I will get a quite a large reaction to the to these organisms and I'll be able to detect it and remove it

Okay, a quick rundown of what is in the ticks toolkit and by that I mean their alive face so they have two palps which are parts of their mouth like little tough Mustaches and they have chalicer eye which cut through their hosts skin and then of course they have that one barbed Needle like hypostome kind of like a cross between a boba straw and Satan's tiny pitchfork, but Nita isn't a frequent victim Thankfully, so I've never had a tick feed particularly long on me. Actually, I'm not sure a tick has ever, you know Taken a blood meal at least not a black-legged tick I did once find a dog tick in my hair that might have been there for a day and

The dog tick carries you can transmit Rocky's Mountain spotted fever, but not Lyme disease and and Rocky Mountain spotted fever is much more rare And it was okay, but yeah I it's something we take very seriously because this tick that we study can carry not just one But actually five recognized tick-borne illnesses It's full of all sorts of different microorganisms that who knows, you know may turn out to have some sort of human Disease-causing capability and so all of our, you know seasonal staff and anyone who's working and tick research We are very careful about being safe and protecting ourselves. Okay, we're all crossing our fingers I made this a last-minute

Opportunistic two-parter with a disease ecologist, but just to wet your Infectious barbed whistle here are some other things ticks can spit into you and a plasmosis Babiosis borella bourbon virus Colorado tick fever ehrlichiosis Heartland virus Lyme disease Poison disease Rickettsiosis Rocky Mountain spotted fever southern tick associated rash illness tick-borne relapsing fever to la remia Some robot-sounding thing called 36 4d Rickettsiosis Ticks I know it's not your fault

You just got caught up in a bad disease racket, but dang you are not welcome in my butt crack So let's lightly touch on a few though. Let's talk a little bit about The diseases in particular you mentioned that you study five But is the one that's at the forefront the most Lyme disease just because of its prevalence right now? Oh, absolutely. So Lyme disease is the number one reported vector-borne disease in the country so cases are reported by Doctors and laboratories to state health departments who then report them to the CDC and the CDC counts them and so each year There's about 30,000 cases, but a couple of studies have estimated that that's very well under reported and that there was a study

2014 2014 I think it's estimated that the true number of cases is probably about 10 times that maybe 300,000 cases per year in its early stages if caught early Most people will be treated and and be okay but in its late stages or in Some percentage of the population even after treatment They will have persistent symptoms or symptoms that go away and come back and so those late stage Complications of Lyme disease can be very serious. They can involve severe arthritis

neurological involvement cardiac Facial paralysis many types of things. I know with Lyme disease Can you tell me a little bit about what are some of the symptoms of it? And is there a difference between late stage and chronic Lyme? What are we looking? Yeah, so I'm not a medical doctor, but I I can tell you that in in its earliest stages Lyme disease can present itself in a very vague way kind of flu like symptoms and fever and malaise and You know feeling generally

Terrible So unfortunately sometimes it goes on diagnosed the tell-tale early symptom of Lyme disease is what we call many people call it a bulls-eye rash Or an EM which stands for your a theme of migrants rash And this is a red rash that will appear usually at the bite site But sometimes some area away from the bite site and there may be multiple ones of them and they they are typically painless and So they can go undetected and they expand and expands over a period of days or weeks And then it will disappear

And so you can imagine if you were bitten behind the knee you may not see any rash that appears If you need a visual this rash looks like if the target logo Got a little sloppy drunk and manifested itself on your skin as if by a ghostly Possession not to be dramatic and so well It's believed most people who do you get infected with Lyme do get a rash Not everybody does and or it may go undetected again because it's not painful or itchy And so but that sign occurs between three and thirty days After infection if you can catch that

Symptom which is a very classic clinical symptom of Lyme disease You know, that's like one of the earliest symptoms and so you can treat it well and it's later stage We're talking about things like I mentioned before you know severe Arthritis there are cases of Lyme carditis, which is a heart infection Other neurological issues and then it really can run the gamut and when it comes to Having Lyme disease that might be resolved with an antibiotic versus late-stage Lyme or maybe what some people call chronic Lyme How do you differentiate and and How do you also feel about some people saying one doesn't exist or I guess it's funny that Lyme has such controversy around it by funny

I mean weird and scary Yeah Yeah, absolutely, and you know again like the way that we approach this from the science that we do is well first of all I'm not a medical doctor. I'm a tip doctor I guess you could say and it's definitely true that there's a lot of people who are very ill and Whether it's Lyme alone or it's Lyme plus some other Co-infection or it's some other tick-borne illness or it's some other illness I you know, I can't say but I I know that there's a lot of people who are very very ill from tick-borne illnesses and in particular

Lyme disease and so the place that that I come from and the work that we do in our lab is really focused on Prevention and understanding tick behavior and also human behavior so that we can we can prevent Lyme disease Whether it's early stage or late stage or post-treatment Lyme disease or chronic Lyme disease you know if we can do better at at prevention science and being able to convince people to Do prevention well before they have an experience with illness Then really hopefully, you know, we can stop having conversations or have fewer conversations about how sick everybody is and really start having Conversations about how how well we're doing at keeping people from getting sick, right? Are there any documentaries that you Like or would recommend on the topic?

Are there any that you're like as age tick doctor? I don't I I don't and I probably only because I am I Haven't had a lot of time to spend watching them. So I don't know I mean, I I did see one documentary and I think it was called under our skin or under your skin And it was very emotionally provoking I think that it really was moving really pointed to the problem of people who are sick with Lyme disease The trailer of this is pretty chilling. We have I think Horrible epidemic and again Nita studies how to prevent the tick-borne diseases not how to treat them

But I also think that there's been a lot of scientists who have been studying this topic for a long time And and so sometimes those scientists have become, you know enemies of the public and I just I want everyone to get along Yeah, I try not to watch that stuff because I want I know that me personally like this is my life and my career And I really feel strongly about wanting to do a good job and researching my field of study Obviously Lyme disease is a very charged topic so charged in fact that but we made some videos Recently, so maybe I can tell you about those So we so there's a lot of I wouldn't say controversy. I'd say Questions and confusion about how people can use pesticides in their backyards to

Reduce the tick populations in their backyards We get a lot of questions about that and so recently the the environmental protection agency Awarded us a grant to try and tackle the science communication issue regarding, you know safe But also judicious and effective pesticides use for controlling texts and because unfortunately, there's a lot of Stuff out there on the market And there's all sorts of rules and regulations about how things can or don't have to be labeled and what you can say about how Effective they are and so it leads to a lot of confusion and we think you know people either over apply stuff or they

They apply stuff that doesn't work, but they feel like they're safe And so we made these, you know story-based videos Nita says that she's trying to communicate the science in a way that's conversational kind of like two neighbors Just yacking about precautions and sharing good advice about the black-legged tick Which is a super hearty mother sucker. Anyway, go to spray safe play safe org again spray safe Play safe org and you will find Nita's videos and a wealth of information on how to deal with these little backyard pests There's also different types of control methods discussed everything from essential oils to fungus-based ones to synthetic Chrysanthemum juice, which is not the scientific term for it

But permeates is hard to say and I already botched Acura acarology yes spray safe play safe has used so covered in safe and effective pesticides And so we just want to make sure that if people you know it's the decision to use a pesticide is totally a personal one and You know whether you want to use it or not is up to you But if you're gonna use it we want you to be armed with all the information to make informed choices So it's not just like throw a grenade in the backyard No, but you know I've been places where people have said they're going to like pave over the whole backyard Which is really sad to me or they say you know my my rule to the children is don't touch anything green outside

Right, I know and I'm like was that what it's coming to I think that you know We really want people to be you know aware but not afraid Because I think just you know arming yourself with knowledge is really important in terms of being able to keep yourself safe Well, what about these thick populations seeming to go up or Lyme disease spreading? I know I've looked at maps from the CDC that have shown where Lyme disease essentially was first Kind of identified which you know old Lyme Connecticut and then having it seeing it kind of like bleed out So to see these maps go to the CDC website and you can type in historical data I'll also link this in the show notes and on my website. So clicking year by year. It's kind of like seeing blue dots

hemorrhaging like ink and in 2017 the only states which did not have reported cases on Lyme disease were Oklahoma and Hawaii and I asked Nita about Where are these black-legged ticks hanging out? Are they moving out of the Northeast? Are they like aging hipsters going to the suburbs? I understand that a lot of folks think it's maybe just in the Northeast But it's been identified in ticks in in all the continental US, right? Yeah, so the the black-legged tick species is you know fairly spread in many places of the US besides the Northeast and Upper Midwest We have the same species, you know down all the way in Florida and Texas as well and in the states in between

The ecology of the tick is a little bit different And so even though we do see the tick we see less disease and I think up here in the Northeast in this part of the country We have it's sort of this perfect storm of transmission and have it has to do with how the ticks behave and how the host behave We have this this issue of climate change as well Which really I think is is going to make the tick situation a lot trickier And really it is changing even more than you've seen in those maps because the tick range has been spreading You know northward and westward and so we commonly now see black-legged ticks up in Canada And so cases of Lyme disease are are more frequently reported in Canada now

one thing I don't recommend looking at unless you like to be very grossed out appalled and Sad for a moose is a photo of mousses covered in ticks to the point where they look like they're just Taoist in pebbled concrete or like the underside of a boat that's been barnacled I want to help the moose so badly even though given that I am untrained and helping moose with ticks It would probably like to kick me in the face Nita says that we have other tick species that are also encroaching take for example the lone star tick Which sounds like the town asshole walking through saloon doors to suck your blood and leave you with an infectious Souvenir so their range is in the east

Southeast and Midwest United States and Nita says in recent years. They've been detecting them more and more Which means they're coming for us Pointy mouth suckers drawn and this tick is really important because You know it also can carry different disease causing agents different than Lyme disease And also it's been implicated in causing a severe red meat allergy And we're talking like anaphylactic red meat allergy and the thing about that lone star tick is like it is a Seriously aggressive human biter and so it's different than these deer ticks We just kind of hang out and wait for you to walk by and they'll grab holes

The lone star tick will detect you from far away and we'll come after you Yeah, and so I think that you know talk about you know Mosquitoes are a nuisance. I think you know nothing would ruin a tick nickel and a bunch of lone star ticks coming along and and You know wanting to grab hold and do not under any circumstances Imagine a wave of lone star ticks Cresting and crashing into your wine and cheese basket aimed at your warm crevices. Don't imagine it. Don't imagine it. Don't do it In addition, you may have heard that there was a new tick in town and invasive tick species I don't know if you've heard this but there's so yes, so a couple of years ago a sheep farmer in

New Jersey was covered in these tiny little ticks and she went to the health department and They were like take off your pants because they're everywhere and they put her pants on the freezer And it turns out this tick is a tick that had previously not been Established in the United States and it's known as the Asian longhorn tick So according to the CDC as of May 28th 2019, which was like one second ago Longhorn ticks have been found in Arkansas, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia and researchers are looking to see where else it's gone

So google image search them and be aware. They're kind of like a reddish brown color With what appears like long legs and they can be up to the size of a pea fully engorged. Why are we freaking out about them? And so this tick in Asia is a serious vector of human disease They it carries a virus. Um, it can also cause a rocky like a rocky mountain sort of spotted fever type illness and uh, and then it's a serious test of livestock And so it's it's now established itself here in new jersey and satin island and Parks of uh, westchester county new york and this tick is really scary because it can

Reproduce by parthenogenesis. So what that means is the female she can she doesn't need a male Mate to reproduce So one female can create, you know A thousand or more babies just essentially cloning herself. And so we really are watching Watching this tick and what it's going to do and we're um, you know, right in sort of the center of where it has now become established So we're really in a place of sort of I think in this region around new york city And heading northward this sort of tick apocalypse I guess you could say uh, we're a lot is going on and so I think we have a lot

You know to learn and we're gonna be seeing a lot of changes in in terms of what the ticks are doing in the in the next decade This is terrifying also one question. Why why why why? Is it that there are more ticks or that there are more deer or that there are more like white footed mice That there's more development. So there's less land. So they're more concentrated like what where's why is it? Such a boom town for ticks. Yeah Well, so part of it is like if you think about what the landscape looks like So so the ticks have been around a long time But if you think about what this part of the country looked like, you know, in the year 1900

It was primarily an agricultural place, right? There was a lot of farmland and pasture land in the forest deforestation and You know to make these grazing areas and so oh the the White-tailed deer were not so you know Abundant as we've sort of you know Reforested this part of the country. We've really led to an abundance of White-tailed deer and so with we know that there's a link between The abundance of ticks and the abundance of deer because deer are the primary reproductive host for the ticks. So the more deer

there's more opportunity for the adult ticks to reproduce And so the other thing that's happened is that we really have started to move into these forested landscapes So and in doing so we fragmented those landscapes and so we've sort of made all these Little cuts into the forest So we're living sort of right in the habitat where the the ticks live and the deer live and on top of that by fragmenting the forest We create a lot of edge habitat and edge habitats are really really great for you know deer love them mice love them We find a lot of ticks right in the edge

And so the riskiest place really for encountering a tick in this part of the country is really in one's own backyard Particularly in that region the ecotone we call it you know and right where that place where the lawn is meeting woods is Is really your riskiest spot, but yeah, it's kind of all of the above, you know There's a lot of deer. There's a lot of ticks and there's a lot of people living really close to them How do you feel about The conspiracy theories about Lyme disease having started in plum island as bio warfare and then spreading from there Uh No comment

I I don't think it's likely You know, it's so complicated like I If I were gonna make a I'm not I don't want to but if I were to think about what would make a good bio Terrorist agent or bio warfare agent. I don't think I would want to Choose a tick that needs all these things right it needs to has a two-year life cycle It only feeds three times in its life And you know, it needs all these different hosts. It just seems to to Too unlikely to me personally. That was the dumbest question ever, but I just wanted to know if you're like, oh, no

We figured out that that's completely legit Oh, no. Yeah, no and as far as I know, it's not legit and I um, you know I just seems unlikely and you think about the some of the bio warfare agents like um, tuliremia is one that tuliremia can be Transmitted, you know by a tick, but it also has is can be transmitted in other ways And so I think like, you know Having only one way to transmit it or something that doesn't persist in the environment very long without a lot of other factors And and something that, you know, people are always going to encounter. I just doesn't seem like the um, You know a way especially because I mean with all different

Diseases out there, you know If you want to a bio warfare agent would want to cause a lot of death. I would think right so So I think lime can be very serious and even fatal in some cases, but um, it's not causing a high degree of mortality That's funny that to think that someone would come up with a bio warfare scheme and their boss would be like Sorry, just not fatal enough Keep working on it. Well, really. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think to be a good bio weapon You really have to think about those things and I don't want to think about those things But when I think about lime disease being a bio terrorist agent, I think

It just seems not terribly plausible to me personally That makes me feel a little better. Yeah But you know what, I mean that thing about underreporting, I mean for me I think like we know there's a lot of cases of lime disease and we know there's a lot of ticks out there And so I just sort of have this Attitude that is, you know, what if you live in a place where there are ticks and you go outside Or you have a pet that goes outside You're probably at risk and you should take preventative action and precaution and be aware

No matter what and whether they're counting the case or not You can still get sick and your doctor can still treat you and so I think counting cases and things may be important For for some people in terms of trying to show the scope of the problem But in terms of keeping yourself safe from being sick, you know We know we know people get sick and we know there's a lot of ticks and ticks are bad What do you do if you have a pet that's out romping? Yeah. Well, I mean, I have two Australian shepherds They're awesome and they are my best field assistants. They come out with me And so we do know there are some studies that you know

Really kind of point to pets that go outdoors as potentially being an additional risk factor for getting a bite by a tick and so treating your pets with a tick preventive product is a good idea and You know treating them all year long Not just during spring and summer months because you know, we'll find ticks in December If the temperatures are above 40 degrees here and so I you know use a collar on my dogs They're you know, it's good for eight months. It kills and repels and there's oral preventatives where the dog You know gets a pill or the cat, you know gets a pill and that Every month and then if a tick

Starts to bite it will it will die before it can feed To completion and so it can work that way. There's these topical spot treatments that can work in different ways either repelling or Killing on contact or also treating such that the tick attaches and then dies while it's feeding and which is better I don't I can't say but uh But I I think it's very important to to treat your animals with a tick a tick products all year long Better than not having an animal. I guess or you could just get cold fish. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah And I think you know when I think about the behavior of of dogs and cats and things, you know

Depending on if you know what you're How you behave with your dog if you take it on a leash you may be able to avoid some of that most ticky habitat But you know if you have cats that go outside Which I've just learned is not it's apparently not cool to do I thought everyone's cats just went outside But that's the thing now and I feel really dumb because I didn't know but I'm learning now Okay for more on this listen to the felonology episode with dr. Miguel delgado so much I did not know about cats so much none of us knew about cats anyway But people do still have cats that go outside and and so those cats, you know, we'll go

All over right they'll go in the woods and they'll be in the the leafy areas where the ticks are Hunkered down when they're not looking for a house and so they can yeah So they they can be exposed in that way And so even if you don't go outside if your cat does and then comes back inside and you're petting it You know, there is a risk for sure Yeah, we don't know what cats are doing out there. They're out honky tonking. They're like later days, man Oh, man But yeah ornithologists are like excuse me. Yeah, that's back indoors, please

So I guess for if for no other reason then so that you don't have to check your butt crack for ticks more often Keep your cats inside Yeah, totally and there's I guess there's a lot of reasons now for keeping your for keeping your cats inside I felt really dumb because I didn't know no Maybe it's because I'm a dog person and I'm not a cat person, but I you know, shout out I love cat people. Well, I thank you. Well, I just learning and I but I do know there's a yes for sure these, you know, cats can pose a risk to to birds and um, there's an issue with feral cats and

potential rabies transmission and certain parts of the country. So yes PSA keep your cats indoors I talked to a felonologist who's like put it on a leash and take it to the park for an hour. That's just fine But I have Questions from listeners who are super excited that you're on and can I ask you some rapid fire questions? Okay, sure Okay, and before we get to the lightning round with your questions a few words about sponsors I like very much who also make this podcast possible

But before we get to them the sponsors also make it possible for us to donate to a charity of the ologist choosing each week and nita enthusiastically supports tick and counter dot org Saying it's a wonderful science-based resource for all things tick related And it's housed at the University of Rhode Island where she worked on her phd. So they do great stuff They have so many pictures of ticks tips. That's tick and counter dot org So a donation was made to them in her name. Okay, some other things I like this week Back to your questions. Okay, so Alice and terry wants to know what is the proper method to remove ticks if you get any on you Great

So the proper method would be get the pointiest pair of tweezers that you can find Grab the tick as close to the skin as you can and pull it perpendicular to the skin and pull up and you know Deliberately and so we really don't recommend slathering it with gasoline or Setting it on fire to get some air spray make some flame throwers or some people put a lip match You know, which isn't a great idea So we don't we want the tick to come out as soon as possible the longer it's attached the more likely it is to transmit things that it's carrying Uh, and we don't really know what happens if you like soak a cotton ball and peppermint oil and put it on the tick

Does it make the tick really pissed off and then does the tick start salivating more and then more likely to transmit something? we don't know and so You know, we recommend that you just a pointy pair of tweezers Pull it straight out and the thing is with the pointy tweezers You can get the closer you can get the better because you'll hear people say oh, I left the head in Which is actually impossible, but what you can leave is the feeding tube. It's called a Hypostome it's like a straw, but it's barbed like a fish hook And so it's hard to get out and sometimes that breaks off and that's not the end of the world

I think of it as like a splinter eventually it'll work its way out Also when a tick is hungry versus engorged they look so much different and I did not know that until this episode Full ticks can take on a grayish color. They look like a whole different species So if you go to tickencounter.org you can see different pictures of different stages of feeding kind of looks like a Big gray brain that's about to burst pretty gnarly ruby ostrich wants to know how close we to a human vaccine Uh, I know that there is a lot of work in the vaccine Research field and I I don't know the answer to that And I I I would like to think that we're within this decade there will be something and as you may know there was

A vaccine on the market for a short period. It was removed from the market So we'll see I think that you know the vaccine for Lyme has a lot of potential With that said if the same tick that carries Lyme can transmit other You know pathogens to humans still prevention measures beyond being vaccinated are still really important like checking your body or wearing repellent Let's see Raymond J. Deutsch wants to know what is it about the area of Connecticut that lent itself To the onset of Lyme disease. Do you think it's the altitude or climate or soil composition? Yeah, well, I we have a lot of forested habitat with deciduous forests in particular And so the ticks really thrive in that under the leaf litter those dead leaves at the base of the forest

And in these forested areas we have lots of tick or excuse me lots of white-tailed deer Which are the most important host for the adult stages of deer ticks And so we have great habitat and of course those forests are full of white-footed mice and other small mammals That can be great hosts for our ticks And I think the other piece of it is that we live in the among These hosts and this forest and then the third thing in particularly here in Connecticut is that we have in some places An abundance of an invasive shrub plant that's known as Japanese barberry and unfortunately Japanese barberry is often sold as an ornamental plant by nurseries and garden centers

And so you can buy it and plant it and unfortunately It can become very widespread and is really damaging to the forest Ecology and the thing about Japanese barberry is now we know that places that have more barberry actually tend to have more ticks And so it sort of adds to this, you know already problematic environment now we have to worry about you know, barberry Being something that's going to help foster the survival and of ticks. I mean, I get it Barberry is pink. It's cute. It's evergreen, but barberry Gtfo. I hate you now. Oh, so down with the barberry. Yeah, definitely if you have barberry

You should consider removing it from your yard Please don't ever buy barberry at your garden center. You find something else to plant The other thing in backyards that people have besides just like a wooded edge is um in this region People have this ground cover vegetation Like pakisandra or myrtle and that you know, it's very low to the ground and then underneath it It's a very moist environment. So ticks this tick species The black legged tick really needs a very high humidity like 80 to 95 humidity To survive well and so it spends a lot of time down in that moist environment

So people who have this pakisandra it looks very nice, but um, you know, it's a great tick haven And so that's again something to consider in your own landscape Like should I you know remove it or if you're going to treat with a tick control product You want to treat not just the wooded edge, but also, you know, ground cover vegetation or the ticks may also be abundant So pakisandra barberry canceled Cancel yeah, or cancel or a treat um or a treat Here you are But certainly the barberry is bad for so many reasons not just for ticks. It's just shouldn't be in our forests

Oh, that's good to know. I had no idea So the truth is, you know, I think knowing just knowing about Uh, whether or not you are in a risky environment for getting a tick bite can go a long way and and so You know taking preventative action and and knowing what a tick looks like is huge So a lot of people like to send us pictures Of ticks or things they found they send us stuff in the mail and you know, it's it's not a tick And if you if you're able to just know the key distinguishing features can go a long way towards keeping people safe and so Yeah, I I

I do I I'm full agreement Lyme disease is a major problem tick-borne illnesses are a major problem in the u.s And you know, we're really focused on trying to prevent it But I think you know because we're dealing with humans, you know We're we're pretty good actually at controlling ticks and we're we're not very good at controlling humans And so people we find that people don't always get good at prevention until they've been sick themselves Or someone in their family has been sick and so what we need is people to be thinking about it before they're sick And taking action before they get a tick bite You know not waiting until that happens and it scares

You know, but jesus out of everyone and then right and then they go running around trying to figure out what to do And the other issue we have is that you know, there's a lot of misinformation out there in terms of you know Even prevention, which you think is a benign topic just this morning on our, you know, community social media Pages someone asked for advice about Preventing backyard ticks and then the responses, you know, really varied from stuff. That's science-based to You know, totally erroneous and not science-based and and so the the age of information has kind of put us in a place where You know, people have to think critically about is this good information? And should I use it?

And so that's that's something we're battling now is trying to understand human behavior and and how we can You know get people to take action and feel you know empowered to take action in a way that is going to be effective I think that people are a little bit Just kind of stunned and don't know what to do So they're just afraid of getting it without really knowing how to prevent it because there's so little and sneaky that It just seems like getting bitten by a ghost like what are you gonna do? Yeah And so it's good to know that there are measures that you can take to prevent that

Yeah, and and just understanding that like a tick it takes some time before it actually can can suck your blood It's a whole process They have to salivate and they have to fight your immune system and then they instace they salivate this cement So they can really stick on you and never come out You know and not never but not while they're feeding and so it but and then they salivate and then they you know Blood is accumulating it takes and they feed really slowly at first and so like Really people like they had the tick it's been on them for you know an hour They take it off

They have a red mark and all of a sudden they're like I need three weeks of doxycycline, right? And and that's not necessarily always the case sometimes the red mark is just you're having a reaction to a tick bite or you know, it's it's It's knowing these small bits of information about how these ticks behave or you know What a tick looks like that can really help you know if you need to run and get three weeks of doxycycline Which you know has its own issues. We worry about antibiotic resistance and all of that So so I think you know, it's it's getting to know the information But that's true for all diseases, right? Like you're supposed to be good at preventing

All you know two's decay and so you brush every day, but that's a habit, right? So are you checking for ticks every day? What's our new motto? Be your crevice's best friend Maybe not So how can we turn it into a habit? All right, you can help me figure that out. I'd love that Significant others could always be a tick check buddy. I'm sure Totally. Well, yeah, and if we know that tick checking is protective and we know that showering is protective Maybe you could make that into like a you know activity together. Yeah

It's like ticks, but make it sexy Totally. Yeah. I mean, why not if that's what it takes Yeah I'm I mean, I'm trying to imagine what that you know infographic that we promote next Is going to be but why not? I mean, I think it at this point you have to you know If it's going to grab your attention and make you take action then we'll do it Right Can I ask you a couple more listener questions? Sure. Is that cool?

Don Ewald wants to know there have been some studies about mosquitoes and their possible preferences for certain blood types Are there any studies on blood types that ticks prefer? Oh, so it's interesting There are no um Studies that I'm aware of that show that ticks have a host preference We do know with mosquitoes that that they do they they will seek tend to seek women over men and brunettes over blondes Okay, so side note apparently there's something about the contrast that the mosquitoes just Really dig so likewise if you're a brunette on a light sandy beach Just watch out and don't swat them mosquitoes when you swat them

They're like, oh there you are and then they just keep writing you just fyi also as long as we're going down Several holes on this blondes report feeling more emboldened socially But brunettes out earn blondes for more on why we judge each other for stupid stuff that doesn't matter See the two-part collology episode about beauty standards Also, should I mention that one study said that redheads have the spiciest romantic lives? No, I don't want to mention that That's gross. Oops. I did. Okay I don't know how ticks feel about me though with ticks We don't know um, and I I think there's some question about that because you know

You hear from people all the time, you know, my husband and I are both always working in the yard but he always gets ticks and I never do and he's more tick attractive but in terms of Of whether or not any of that is true. We don't know What we do know about particularly about the black legged tick is that it will feed on everything It feeds on mammals. It feeds on birds. It feeds on reptiles and it really is opportunistic It feeds on large mammals and small mammals So I think that this particular tick species the lime Perpetrator is pretty easy going when it comes to comes to choosing a host

But whether or not it might choose you over me if we're standing right there presenting ourselves as hosts I I don't know the answer and we do talk about it a lot and and I think it needs further study Nita's body though lets her know when she's got a sucky blood barnacle I think it's great that you have essentially a very loud car alarm in your body that's like You got a tick you got a tick helpful that you have an immune response to it perhaps Yeah, and actually some some researchers are you know trying to capitalize on that because there are people who are very reactive to ticks And so can there be a vaccine that is an anti tick vaccine, right?

And it will make you itchy or reactive to a tick bite so that you catch it before it has time to transmit anything So using those reactive properties that some people have to try and create a vaccine And his last listener question is deli dames wants to know how does the town of lime feel about having a disease named? You'd have to ask the town of lime residents. I really don't know. I mean, they're yeah, they're sort of famous for For this and I don't know. I guess it's good to be on the map for some reason and actually I mean though there was a woman who really was the The start of all of this becoming known and her name was poly Murray and she was a very astute mother Who was noticing that there were a lot of kids getting arthritis around the area?

And so if it weren't for her real great powers of observation, you know, it might have taken a lot longer to come up with that So I think the the town of lime should be very proud I think um, you know, why not be proud of that and and having you know, someone who is astute enough to say Okay, something's going on here. Yeah, there was some I care some kids movie. I was watching with my kids I think it was like Madagascar or something like that and they were you know Chris rock his character was like, come on. What would Connecticut have to offer us lime disease? Thank you, melmine. I'm like, oh, It's we're Connecticut. That's where you know, that's what we get as being and then what we're known for Now, what is something about your job? Last two questions. I always ask that you

Really hate what sucks about ticks or your job What sucks about ticks you were making a pun. That was great Oh, no, I swear I wasn't I swear But I fully understand that I have no credibility anymore when it comes to Denying dad jokes. Okay, but yes, what slices her open and takes a blood meal out of her day. What sucks I mean, I love my job. I feel so lucky that I can, you know, study an organism that I absolutely think is You know, very important and also really very cool From the biology standpoint, um, you know as someone who is trying to run research studies and and

I guess the sometimes there's a lot of you know, paperwork and stuff like that And that's that's probably the hardest part But I think that other scientists may like that more but not really for me I think um, I feel really lucky that this is something that I get to do for my for my job I really love I want nothing more than to be out in the field, you know, doing the field work, you know, collecting the ticks We'll do well last summer we had a study We were actually we're laying down and we were sitting and we were kneeling We were trying to figure out what activities get us

Are, you know, you know be more risky than others and I mean I could do that all day It's my favorite thing and when I have to stay inside and do a budget or report I feel so sad to watch everyone go out in Without me because I would do it all day long every day. I love it Her favorite thing about her job is lying down to have ticks Literally eat her alive. God. I love her. I loveologists so much What was the position that got you the most ticks? Stay tuned. We only did a we only did a

A pilot and we're gonna scale it up a little bit this year But you know, I think surprisingly to many people You know, we found that a lot of our ticks were found above the knee from these activities So, you know, a lot of people think, you know, you're only gonna if you're walking through the woods It's gonna end up on your on your shoes and it may be that, you know It's when you kneel down to pull a weed or when you, you know, drop You know pick up a stick or you're clearing brush in your yard You might get it on your arm and certainly laying down is a risky thing to do in the woods

I don't know how many people do that, but we did it and And that seemed to I think I think it was either sitting down or laying down that That exposed us to the most nymph stage ticks And it was yeah, that's fun. I I don't say that lately. I know that, you know, ticks are a major the risky thing But I just you know, just to give you an idea of the things that we do To improve prevention, we put ourselves out there Well, my last question is always what's your favorite thing about your job?

But apparently yours is lying in the woods waiting for ticks Yes, I love it. I love collecting ticks. I love and I also love looking at the ticks under the microscope They're just they're amazing if you look at one up close They're it's pretty astounding to see Their anatomy is really complicated just if you could look at a picture of the tick Hypostomal that's their feeding tube It has multiple like teeth on them and they're they're barbed so that you know The tick easily can go in but it's more hard for it to come out

It's very elaborate and different tick species have different You know, we call it dentation. It's the different numbers of these little teeth spines And it's really incredible to to look up close. So I recommend everyone take a look It really looks like if a knife grew more knives on the surface of the knife. It's a micro horror I mean, I love bugs and I have to say that ticks are though Like ticks are kind of the ones on my shit list of like ticks and cockroaches I feel bad because I'm like, I do think that it's really great to respect them For how stealthy they are. So I think that they'll create a really good thing to start just outsmart them

It's don't hate them. Just outsmart them. Maybe I think that's a really great approach. I like that. This is one of my lists forever I thank you for being so passionate. I'm so I'm so glad that you got head lice as a child Me too It's really fun who I am I actually had sort of forgotten about that and I was telling the story to someone not that long ago and then I'm like Oh, yeah, you know, that could have been the moment. We're all better for it. So thanks for getting headlights You're welcome. I don't know. Yes. Bye. Bye So hop on a phone and ask smart people stupid questions because the world is a mysterious and dark

An interesting place and I know we're all terrified of ticks But they did a lot of evolving to get where they're at and we have pretty big squishy brains So let's just try to outsmart them again So much info is up at tick encounter.org and nita's videos are at spray safe play safe.org I will put a link to my site in the show notes You can find all this stuff there and remember daily tick checks Be your crevice's best friend now. You can follow nita because she's amazing She's at tick lab on twitter on instagram on facebook

Just at tick lab. God bless her for that uniformity and her lab website is www wcsuticklab.com and I will put a link in the show notes Allergies is at allergies on twitter and instagram. Say hello there I'm at alley ward with one L on both twitter and instagram Thank you. Hannah lipo and erin talbert for adminning the facebook allergies podcast group full of curious non jerks who are so sweet to each other and Allergiesmerch.com has all of your allergies podcast merch needs shirts and totes and pins and hats If you post a photo to instagram tagged with allergies merch, I repost one mondays

And thank you to shannon feltsis and body judge for helping manage that the last two years They're two sisters who have a brand new Hilarious and charming podcast called you are that and it's out now wherever you get podcasts So find it subscribe and get to know them in episode zero and then on june 10th Their first episodes drop and you will love them. Also. Happy birthday to aiden feltsis on june 10th Assistant editing was done by jared sleeper of mind jam media. He also hosts the mental health podcast my good bad brain Which has the best theme music ever just trust me go listen You'll get us stuck in your head all day and be so happy about it

Also, thank you to steven ray morris of the per cast and c Jurassic right for stitching this all together every week This week it's up a little late because someone I love very much was in the hospital And so I was out of town helping out and also I had a few back-to-back shoots in the middle of moving So i'm just getting my bearings and everything will be good and normal next week I promise uh, which brings me to the secret at the end of an episode I think two weeks ago I told y'all that my wallet was stolen at walmart. Guess what guess what happened The sheriff called and someone found it in a bush near walmart with everything in it

But the cash which at this point is fine And it's very good because I hadn't even had a chance to tell the dmv that I needed a new id And i'm getting on another plane in a few hours and the tsa Side note does not appreciate expired passports is id they punish you with a booty massage in front of all the other passengers But jokes on them because sometimes they squeeze your feet while doing a pat down and honestly, it's very comforting and I like it Okay, all right. You got to check your crevices yourself though. They don't do tick checks Don't even ask not their job. Okay. Goodbye G

And I'd like to check you for tips