Yet another article using a photo of the wrong tick

Newspaper articles and TV news stories consistently use photos of the wrong tick species, but we expect better of Scientific American and USDA!

This is not a Deer Tick; it's not even a tick that spreads Lyme disease.

Engorged blacklegged tick larvae

Tick eggs hatch into larvae that have 3 pairs of legs (unlike the nymphs and adults that have 4 pairs). Larvae feed once on a host such as a mouse, usually in late summer, at which point they are refered to as "engorged".

These engorged larvae, full of mouse blood, may molt in nymphs within a few weeks, or later in the year may choose to overwinter and not emerge until the following Spring.

Updated map of blacklegged tick distribution

Rebecca Eisen and colleagues from the CDC have updated the well-known Dennis et al. (1994) black-legged tick distribution map.  Data for counties in several states, particularly Tennessee and Michigan, were contributed by the Lyme Gradient  team.

 

The distribution of tick sightings across the United States between a) 1907–1996 and b) 1907–2015  (D. T. Dennis et al., J. Med. Entomol. 1998; R. J. Eisen et al., J. Med. Entomol. 2016).

 

A ScienceMag story on the map includes a nice shout-out to Isis, for her PhD studies comparing the questing behavior of Northern and Southern ticks.  http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/lyme-disease-carrying-ticks-are-now-half-all-us-counties