It's Not Just You: The Tick Situation Is Getting Worse
Lately, Shannon LaDeau and her colleagues have had unwelcome visitors at their office in New York's Hudson Valley: ticks, crawling up the building and trying to get through doors.
'Which is kind of alarming,' said Dr. LaDeau, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies who studies the arachnids and the pathogens they carry.
As winters get warmer, ticks of several kinds are flourishing. Deer ticks, known for transmitting Lyme disease, are moving farther north. The longhorned tick, which came from overseas, has gained a foothold on the East Coast and begun moving west. Gulf Coast ticks have made it to states like Connecticut and Indiana. The lone star tick, which can make people allergic to red meat, is fanning out from the South and has been found as far as Canada.
And even in places long accustomed to them, ticks are becoming more numerous and active for longer stretches of each year.
Why is this happening, and how can you protect yourself? We asked the experts.
What changes are researchers seeing?
Marc Lame, an entomologist and clinical professor emeritus at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs, put it simply: 'There are more and different types of ticks around than there used to be, and I don't see that stopping anytime soon.'
The spread of individual species can be difficult to track. The longhorned tick, for example, was not identified in the United States until 2017, but a recent study confirmed that it was here as early as 2010.
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