“As the name implies, they bite dogs a lot,” she says. Merritt said the American dog tick also can transmit all the diseases associated with the other tick species. “We find black-legged ticks equally in pine and hardwood stands.” “It is the main culprit for spreading Lyme disease, but it also can spread other illnesses, like anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis and tularemia,” Merritt says. The tick that has gained the most notoriety because of its association with Lyme disease is the black-legged tick. The Lone Star tick is found primarily in hardwood stands, while the Gulf Coast tick, which is a little larger and transmits similar diseases, is found primarily in more open areas with shrubs. “We found that the Lone Star tick and the Gulf Coast tick are the most aggressive,” Merritt says. The Lone Star tick is the most common tick in Alabama and can transmit a host of diseases, including the alpha-gal red meat allergy, Southern rash disease (a Lyme-like illness), tick paralysis and spotted fever diseases that are closely related to Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The most commonly collected ticks included the Lone Star tick, the Gulf Coast tick, the black-legged tick (aka deer tick) and the American dog tick. The study that started in 2015 was to update and expand that research to include field collection sites for ticks. Merritt said a study on ticks and tick-related illnesses hadn’t been done since the early 1990s, and it was very limited in scope. It’s the family of ticks that turkey hunters dread each spring, and the prevalence of disease-carrying ticks is becoming more evident each year.Įmily Merritt, a research associate at Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, has been working on a project since 2015 to determine the species of ticks in Alabama and their ranges. I’m talking about something much, much smaller but possibly just as harmful. And I’m not talking about the danger of encountering a member of the serpent family. (Photo by Emily Merritt)īy David Rainer (Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources)Īs a turkey hunter, I am keenly aware of the threat posed by sneaking through the Alabama woods. A collection of ticks found in certain areas in Alabama.
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