Ticks love it around here and they are having a field day.
While it鈥檚 hard to quantify exactly how many more ticks there are, D.C. area researchers say the population is growing and thriving.
鈥淚f you were watching them over the last 10 years, they’re really kind of exploding, especially in the Mid-Atlantic to northeast area,鈥� Grace Hummell, a University of Maryland faculty researcher, told 海角社区app. 鈥淎nd it’s different species.鈥�
And the little bugs find the region has a lot of what they鈥檙e looking for in a perfect home.
鈥淚t’s hot and humid and ticks love hot and humid areas,鈥� Hummell said. 鈥淲e’re having longer springs and falls, so there’s more interaction with the ticks when you’re going out. And then, of course, we have a lot of white-tailed deer here, and host species that are really good at keeping those abundances high of ticks.鈥�
Plus, one tick can make a lot more.
鈥淥ne female lone star tick or one female deer tick can lay up to like 3,000 to 8,000 eggs in one go,鈥� said Hummell’s colleague Logan Owens, a graduate research assistant. 鈥淪o it’s not only that there’s more ticks. They just are incredibly efficient at reproducing, and so that doesn’t help either.鈥�
The ticks’ range is also expanding. The warming climate means ticks that were once found only in the southeastern United States can survive in places like Maine.
Avoiding the little bloodthirsty hitchhikers
If it鈥檚 raining out, ticks will hide out, but they are more likely to hitch a ride on you or your dog on hot and humid days without any rain.
“If you have longer stints of two weeks of hot, humid days, they’re out every day trying to get on a host, so that could be a possibility of why we’re seeing more,” Hummell said.
But it’s best that people be on guard “anytime that they’re outside,” Owens added, “even if they’ve just gone outside, to like take out the garbage or something like that, and they brushed across the grass.”
Hikers and people working in their yards and gardens should take extra precautions.
“You could go out to a park and there’s nothing听and then maybe go to your neighbor’s yard and there’s hundreds of ticks,” Hummell said.
“Taking the time to actually check 鈥� look over your pants, making sure that you’re covering any excess skin that you can. So wearing pants, wearing long socks, tucking your socks into your pants, those are going to be the things, unfortunately, that you have to do,鈥� Owens said.
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