Transcript:
During the summer, stacks of envelopes arrive at a lab in upstate New York. Inside are ticks that people pulled off their bodies after spending time outside.
Thangamani: “And then we tell them what tick species it was, what life cycle stage it was, and what pathogen it carries.”
Saravanan Thangamani runs the Upstate Tick Testing Laboratory at SUNY Upstate Medical University.
He says tick populations are expanding in many parts of the Northeast, largely because of climate change.
As temperatures warm, ticks can survive in some areas that were once too cold for them and stay active longer in the year.
Climate change is also shifting the geographic range of some of the animals that ticks feed on.
Thangamani: “When this wildlife moves to a different geographic area, the ticks are carried along with them as well.”
Since 2019, his team has tested more than 30,000 ticks, mostly from New York.
They found that about a third carried one or more pathogens – like the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, the virus that causes tick-borne encephalitis, or the parasite that causes babesiosis.
So the lab gives people information they can share with their doctor, and it also gives scientists data to track the changing risks as the climate warms.
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media
