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Globe and Mail
3 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
N.B. professor aims to broaden tick research after battling Lyme disease
When Vett Lloyd was bitten by a tick in 2011, it marked the beginning of a painful, years-long battle with Lyme disease. It also abruptly altered the trajectory of her career. At the time, Dr. Lloyd's research at New Brunswick's Mount Allison University was focused on cancer biology but she wondered why people weren't paying more attention to ticks. So, she converted her cancer lab into a tick lab and reoriented her life's work around the tiny bloodsucker that nearly ruined her. It was a scientific pursuit with a surprisingly therapeutic perk. 'When testing ticks, the first step you do is grind them into oblivion,' she says. 'And I must admit, it took me about 10 years to get over the joy of doing that.' Nova Scotians watch their backs – and each other's – during another tick-infested summer Dr. Lloyd would still love to see ticks 'disappeared from the face of the Earth.' But 13 years studying the parasitic arachnids have forced a begrudging admiration as well, both for their fascinating biology and remarkable ability to spread. Ticks, which are cousins of spiders and scorpions, have been crawling the planet for about 99 million years, according to fossil evidence showing that they once fed on dinosaurs. But in countries such as Canada and the United States, their numbers have risen dramatically in recent decades and ticks are increasingly recognized as a growing threat to public health. In Canada, some 40-odd tick species have been documented, Dr. Lloyd says – but only a handful are adept at biting people or spreading human disease. One species that's expert at both is the Ixodes scapularis, also known as the blacklegged tick or deer tick. It was once ignored by the public-health establishment. That all changed after 1976, when authorities in Lyme, Conn., reported a cluster of children with unexplained arthritis – an illness later attributed to the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, which is primarily spread through tick bites. Today, blacklegged ticks are a known vector for seven human pathogens: five bacteria (including the Lyme bacterium), one parasite (that causes a malaria-like illness) and a rare virus called Powassan, named for the Ontario town where it was discovered after the death of a five-year-old. Just three decades ago, there was only one spot in Canada where blacklegged ticks were known to be endemic: Long Point, Ont., along the shores of Lake Erie. But just across the U.S.-Canadian border, ticks were on the rise – as were the diseases they spread. Every year, millions of ticks are biting birds that fly into Canada. A 2008 study estimated that northward-migrating birds carry anywhere from 50 million to 175 million blacklegged ticks into Canada every year – all of which drop off their feathered hosts once they finish feeding. 'Canada's being bombed by ticks in the spring,' says Nick Ogden, first author of the 2008 migratory bird study and director of the modelling hub division with the Public Health Agency of Canada. Ask a Doctor: What should I know about ticks and Lyme disease? 'And when the temperatures rise to a suitable level for the ticks, they can start off a population.' In 2019, researchers conducted Canada's first real-time surveillance study of tick populations and found Ixodes ticks in every province except Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador. Of the 567 ticks collected, 25 per cent were infected with the Lyme bacterium. (In British Columbia, Lyme disease is less of a concern because another tick species – the Ixodes pacificus, a far less competent vector – is prevalent.) Climate change has been a major driver of their spread. Ticks were already capable of surviving Canadian winters under certain conditions, Dr. Ogden says – for example, if they find a cozy leaf layer, where the microclimate might keep temperatures closer to zero. 'And they've got a bit of antifreeze in their bodies, which protects them,' he adds. But the warming planet is resulting in more cumulative days with temperatures above zero – a key threshold for ticks to survive and thrive, according to Dr. Ogden's research. Given that female ticks can lay between 2,000 to 3,000 eggs in a single clutch, it doesn't take long for their numbers to explode. 'Nationally, it's really exponential what we're seeing,' says Manisha Kulkarni, the scientific director of the Canadian Lyme Disease Research Network and a professor at the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. 'The abundance of ticks is really increasing ... which is leading to that amplification of tick-borne pathogens and that potential for spillover.' The key to fighting ticks? Getting to know them better Every person who contracts Lyme will have unwittingly supplied one of the three blood meals that a blacklegged tick requires over its lifetime, which can span two to four years. Newly hatched from its egg, the six-legged tick larvae will die without its first blood meal. 'So, the mom usually lays her eggs close to a mouse burrow,' says clinical microbiologist Muhammad Morshed, program head for zoonotic disease and emerging pathogens at the BC Centre for Disease Control. 'They can easily hop onto mice or some other warm-blooded animal.' Rodents are natural reservoirs for the Lyme bacterium, however. So, this first feed often infects the tick, which continues harbouring the pathogen even after moulting into an eight-legged nymph. Blacklegged ticks don't seek out people. But their primary strategy for finding a blood meal is to climb a leaf or blade of grass, outstretch its front legs, and simply wait. If the first warm-blooded creature to come along is human, so be it. For the first 24 hours after biting, the tick is mostly just salivating and preparing for what scientists refer to, somewhat horrifyingly, as the 'big sip.' 'It's not really getting a lot of blood at first,' says Rebecca Eisen, a research biologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's division of vector-borne diseases. 'But it keeps on feeding, and then it just gets the big sip and engorges.' Ticks need strategies for staying attached. It helps to be a nymph, which is the size of a poppy seed and therefore tough to detect. Their mouthparts also have barbs and their salivary glands secrete an adhesive substance known as 'tick cement.' And generally, an infected tick needs to be embedded for more than 24 hours before disease transmission occurs, Dr. Eisen says. 'The blood getting into the midgut tells [the bacteria] 'Hey, we found a host,'' she explains. 'Then they'll start the migration into the salivary glands.' In its final life stage, the adult tick is trying to mate. A female needs a third and last blood meal to lay her eggs, so tick copulation mostly occurs on larger mammals – primarily white-tailed deer, an animal that's enjoyed a population resurgence in recent decades. As ever more millions of ticks embark upon this life cycle in Canada, Dr. Lloyd hopes her research will help people live more safely among their exploding numbers. Her lab is looking for better diagnostics, as well as answers to basic science questions – why, for example, do ticks seemingly have a greater hunger drive when they're infected? Pulverizing ticks may have provided early satisfaction for Dr. Lloyd, but her research has always been driven by a deep and personal understanding of the misery these bloodsuckers can cause. She still thinks of the man who once left her a voice mail, desperately seeking help for his chronic Lyme symptoms. When she phoned back, she learned that he had died by suicide. 'It's not just a nine-to-five job for me; I want to try and help,' Dr. Lloyd says. 'I've seen the devastation this causes.'
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Study finds impacts of colonization destroyed nearly 90% of Burrard Inlet food ecosystems
Social Sharing Michelle George's family has stories of the fish in the Burrard Inlet being so plentiful they stopped ships from sailing further into the water. "You could walk across the backs of [the fish] to get to the other side of the river," George said. "After dynamite fishing, it was completely wiped out." A new research study, in partnership with the səl̓ilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nation and the University of B.C., has found the impacts of colonization from as early as 1750, including smallpox, overfishing and industrialization, destroyed nearly 90 per cent of the food systems and sources in the Burrard Inlet in Metro Vancouver. Ecosystems 'devastated' Researchers say, to their knowledge, the study is the first attempt to quantify the impacts of colonization on an ecosystem. "After contact, our homes were devastated. Our lives were devastated, and so was the ecology around us," said George, co-author and cultural and technical specialist with the Tsleil-Waututh. Added co-author and Michelle's father, Micheal George (spelled Micheal), a cultural adviser with Tsleil-Waututh, "You go from hearing stories of abundance, you know, a wide variety of seafoods, to nearly nothing." WATCH | Study authors speak about impact of colonization: Study finds colonization destroyed 90% of food ecosystem in Burrard Inlet 23 days ago A new study from the University of B.C. and the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation found that smallpox, overfishing and rapid industrialization devastated the traditional foods of First Nations in the area. Study co-author Micheal George said his people went from hearing stories of abundance to "nearly nothing," while his daughter and another co-author, Michelle, said it shows the need for habitat restoration. Micheal said community members were eating clams on the Inlet's beach until about 1972. "I'm talking about eating clams on the beach, getting the water from the Inlet and boiling it right on the beach — to not being able to touch it at all." Studying the period between 1750 and 1980, the article draws on archeology, historical ecology, archival records and Tsleil-Waututh science. The research model estimated that in 1750 — 42 years before European contact — the Tsleil-Waututh harvested more than 2,200 tonnes of food from the inlet every year, including clams, herring, chum salmon, birds and crabs, according to a Tsleil-Waututh news release on the study. But many of those species, including herring, sturgeon and halibut, were all "extirpated" — meaning locally exterminated — from the Burrard Inlet. Keeping an eye on herring, a small fish with a big impact on the Pacific's ecosystem 3 months ago The Howe Sound Marine Stewardship Initiative and the Squamish First Nation have teamed up to study Pacific herring, a species which almost went extinct in the 1960s but has made a comeback in recent years. CBC's Camille Vernet explains why the fish plays an important role in balancing the Pacific's ecosystem. Fishing with dynamite Herring was extirpated as settler fisheries used dynamite fishing between 1885 and 1915. The dynamite fishing, in which settlers would throw dynamite off a wharf into the water, was a preferred method for fishing herring, according to a 2023 study on the collapse of forage fish in Vancouver. The UBC study also highlighted the particular cultural importance of Pacific herring as a food source for many First Nations in B.C. and as an ecologically keystone species. "Herring and salmon are two of the pillars of traditional səl̓ilwətaɬ diets and the loss of herring and salmon biomass in the [Burrard Inlet] ecosystem represents a loss to səl̓ilwətaɬ lifeways and food sovereignty," according to the study. Researchers also considered the impact of smallpox, noting reports indicated two smallpox waves killed between 50 and 90 per cent of the Tsleil-Waututh community. "The model showed a dramatic change in ecosystem state as soon as the 1782 CE smallpox epidemic hits, reducing the səl̓ilwətaɬ population by 80 per cent, from 10,000 to 2,000," said the report. Following the epidemics, the report says the settler population and environmental impacts increased. The study also noted that because the dramatic loss in certain fish populations happened before the baseline states of the inlet were established, the Western scientific understanding of the inlet's biodiversity has been based on a reduced state. "Where we are now is already at a level of devastation," Michelle George said. 'Tremendous loss' Bruce Miller, an emeritus professor of anthropology at UBC, said he's not surprised by the study's findings. "It's an important piece of work," he said. Miller said his work locally, as well as in the Gulf Islands and Puget Sound, also shows a "tremendous loss" of foreshore and species. "It's a message to the larger population that they're the people of this region, that they've been the stewards of it, that they're aware of what's happened." He noted Canada has a constitutional obligation to uphold Indigenous rights and way of life, and said a recent court case found the cumulative impact of a series of industrial developments violated the Treaty 8 rights of the Blueberry River First Nations in northern B.C. "[The Tsleil-Waututh Nation is] saying, 'We have a right to show you what the cumulative effects are,'" Miller said. "And, man, have they shown what the cumulative effects are. That's why this is important." Michelle George still has hope for the future of the Inlet. She said the community has been transplanting eel grass there, which she hopes will benefit the forage fish. Herring are returning too, Michelle said — and orcas. "I think the killer whales coming back is a huge sign, related to the herring, and then also just the … entire food web."
CBC
7 hours ago
- CBC
Creating 'ripples of change': Nova Scotia immigrant wins national leadership award
When Simone Le Gendre arrived in Nova Scotia from Trinidad and Tobago in 2018, it was her first time setting foot on Canadian soil. She had no idea that seven years later she would be honoured as one of Canada's top-25 immigrants and be the inaugural recipient of the Edward Jones Leadership Award. The awards, in their 17th year, are presented by Canadian Immigrant magazine to celebrate immigrant success across Canada. At the ceremony in Toronto this week, Le Gendre was recognized for her vision and commitment to inclusion. She was the only person from Atlantic Canada to receive an award this year. 'I feel really, really blessed' Le Gendre secured a senior role in education administration in Nova Scotia before leaving Trinidad, where she worked for the National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology. "I thought that my skill set was unique and probably would be really hard for me to find a job in my field," she said. "But right before I moved to Canada ... I said, 'You know what, let me just throw my hat in the ring'... I feel really, really blessed." She has held various positions since arriving, including becoming Nova Scotia's first immigrant and Black woman to become the province's director of immigration and settlement. According to Le Gendre, she didn't see it as an opportunity to be the first but rather as a chance to bring her lived experience to the role. In hindsight, she said it was a "huge privilege" to be the first immigrant and Black woman in that role. She said she wanted to give other immigrants a glimpse of what it was like to be inside the system. Today, she is the director of policy and strategic initiatives at the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, where she helps co-ordinate Nova Scotia's responses to a number of federal-provincial initiatives. Outside her role in government, Le Gendre founded EduHaus Inc., opening up access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics through initiatives like the AI-powered STEMpal and Roots & Harvest urban farm. "Government cannot do everything.... I decided that I was just not going to stand by and criticize," she said. "I was going to build whatever I felt needed to exist, to make more people included in STEM and in taking back control of their food systems." Driven by her faith The leadership award holds deep significance, she said. She said being the inaugural recipient is "deeply humbling." "To me, leadership means using every opportunity to create ripples of change that outlast you," she said. Le Gendre said she is driven by values instilled by her parents Cecil and Annette Le Gendre. She said her Roman Catholic faith has given her the strength to deal with whatever challenges life has thrown at her. Canada gave her the opportunity to deliver big dreams for government and herself, she said. Nawaz Meghji, the principal and general counsel for Edward Jones Canada, immigrated to Canada with his family from Tanzania in the 1970s. He said immigrants like Le Gendre make great efforts to improve the lives of others. "Canada needs far more people like that," he said.
