The deer tick, the bacterial carrier, is tiny (not as tiny as the bacterium). It often goes unnoticed. If you are unlucky and one of these little buggers latches on to you, and it’s carrying the bacteria, you might be lucky enough to develop the tell-tale red circle rash. This may develop into the even more tell-tale bullseye pattern. This ‘luck’ means you have a pretty good idea that you have been infected and can get the antibacterial doxycycline flowing through your veins quickly, perhaps before any real bad symptoms show up.
More common, or at least more seen, is the larger dog tick. This species doesn’t carry the disease (usually) but can carry other diseases.
These tow ticks are just the tip of the iceberg. Maine has 14 species of ticks.
Here are the 12 others, some don’t have common names: Bird Tick, Brown Dog Tick, Ixodes angustus, Ixodes dentatus, Ixodes gregsoni, Lone Star Tick, Mouse Tick, Rabbit Tick, Seabird Tick, Squirrel Tick, Moose Tick, and the Woodchuck Tick.
Ticks latch onto hosts in order to get the blood, and the energy within. Ticks may have many hosts, and at each stage their need blood. Some ticks stay on one host through their life cycle. The Lyme carrier, the Deer Tick, is a 3-host tick different stages of it life: larvae—Mice, Nymph—squirrel, Adult—deer. At least these mammals are their preferred host. Too bad they don’t stick to those.
Their blood sucking similarity to mosquitoes reminds me of a recent study where genetic changes were inflicted on female mosquitoes of the variety that carry malaria (Kyrou et al. reading below). Genetic manipulation of the female mosquitoes ability to reproduce caused an extinction of the species (in the lab). Can we battle ticks in this way? Could we, SHOULD WE, do this to any animal (ticks or mosquitoes, or something nastier) in the wild? How much would we be messing up the energy flow within the ecosystem. The study mentioned above used the much touted CRISPR-Cas9. This method was, a few years ago, being written about as if it was the salvation/cure for all human genetic diseases. Plus you'll be able to make your child blue-eyed and super smart :-) So far successes with this method of changing genetic data (FYI: Patents not withstanding, this method wasn’t invented it was stolen from bacteria) has been slow but existent. Should we be messing with this stuff. What if CRISPR escapes the ticks/mosquitoes—cue the next action/horror movie.
Ticks also carry other nasty diseases. The Deer Tick, Ixodes scapularis, (also called the black-legged tick) can also carry anaplasmosis and babesiosis. The Babesiosis parasite causes flu-like symptoms and anemia due to red blood cell break down. It’s potentially deadly but treatments are available. Anaplasmosis is caused by bacteria and symptoms are similar to the others, body aches, chills etc. It can be treated with the same antibacterial used for Lyme disease, doxycycline.
Back to Lyme
The symptoms are no fun, nasty flu-like crap. Body aches, night sweats. One so inflicted told me, “it was like the worst flu ever”. Sounds horrible.
When I was infected I was somewhat lucky. I got the red rash just after symptoms began. I had a few days of feeling worse and worse, then the rash. By the next day I was having a Dr. look at it saying, yep, you’ve got it. I took my first doxycycline tablet by that afternoon. In just a few short days I was feeling much better. Wow modern medicine can be awesome.
But it still makes a walk in the woods seem like a poor idea. By the way ticks hang out along the trails. They reach out trying to grasp the trail takers, deer, mice, and the unlucky human.
And doxycycline may make you sensitive to sun exposure — happy vacation.
Readings:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is your one stop shop for learning about the diseases associated with ticks: https://www.cdc.gov
Kyrou, K. et al. 2018. A Crispr-cas9 Gene Drive Targeting Doublesex Causes Complete Population Suppression in Caged Anopheles Gambiae Mosquitoes. Nature Biotechnology
P.B.
What about this climate change stuff, will/ is that making things worse? Yes.