Meetup With Invisible Menace No Walk in the Pinelands Park

[Teegate]

Meetup With Invisible Menace No Walk in the Pinelands Park - The SandPaper

It’s not an assault from a person or a dangerous weapon. It can happen while you’re enjoying a sublime day, minding your own business, from something so small it’s invisible to the naked eye and you’d need a microscope to see it. Coming from North Jersey, I was familiar with a plethora of spring...

www.thesandpaper.net

 

[Boyd]

"Chiggers (a funny sounding name) are the juvenile form of a mite. The larvae are red, wingless, six-legged parasites."

I thought we were in general agreement here that this isn't correct in the Pines? And what is commonly called "chiggers" are actually just young ticks. Didn't @Sue Gremlin even sign off on that?

I don't understand the the article title, "Meetup With Invisible Menace No Walk in the Pinelands Park". But I guess "No" is a typo and should really be "On". But "Pinelands Park" is an odd one though, the author didn't mention a "park" and wasn't on a "walk". She was planting shrubs in her backyard.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

"Chiggers (a funny sounding name) are the juvenile form of a mite. The larvae are red, wingless, six-legged parasites."

I thought we were in general agreement here that this isn't correct in the Pines? And what is commonly called "chiggers" are actually just young ticks. Didn't @Sue Gremlin even sign off on that?

I don't understand the the article title, "Meetup With Invisible Menace No Walk in the Pinelands Park". But I guess "No" is a typo and should really be "On". But "Pinelands Park" is an odd one though, the author didn't mention a "park" and wasn't on a "walk". She was planting shrubs in her backyard.

Nope. Chiggers are not baby ticks, they are the 6 legged larvae of the harvest mite, Trombicula. I recall vaguely someone posting that they thought they could see chiggers, and maybe even got a really close up look at them and they turned out to be larval lone star ticks.
Chigger larvae are much smaller and very difficult to see with the naked eye.

 

[Boyd]

Nope. Chiggers are not baby ticks, they are the 6 legged larvae of the harvest mite

Right, I am (unfortunately) familiar with chiggers, going way back to my youth in the Midwest. But I thought the concensus was that these are not what bites us in the pines? There are a few threads about this somewhere.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Right, I am (unfortunately) familiar with chiggers, going way back to my youth in the Midwest. But I thought the concensus was that these are not what bites us in the pines? There are a few threads about this somewhere.

I don't think so, there are plennnty of chiggers in the pines. (Strangely, I have not encountered any here in the midwest).

 

[Boyd]

Well, I'll admit I don't know anything about it and the study of bugs never interested me. I was just basing this on what others have posted here, such as this (there are other threads too):

https://forums.njpinebarrens.com/threads/ticks-chiggers-a-study.11884/page-7#post-151158

Bob and I have a friend who is a botanist but also is heavy into entomology and he states what we are calling chiggers are actually tick larvae.He does claim that there are chiggers in South Jersey but they are rare and usually found one at a time.Chiggers are red and have six legs, tick larvae are maroon and have eight legs like a tick.Chiggers I believe would be insects? and ticks are arachnids.Bob and I disagreed over weather the little bastards that chew everyone up every summer and early fall were ticks are chiggers.Problem is most folks refer to tick larvae as chiggers and believe them to be so.I always have till our friend set me straight.I still refer to them as chiggers since folks immediately know what I"m talking about and don't bother to explain the difference since most don't agree with me or could care less but for those who are interested in the fine points of parasite identification I claim they are tick larvae that plague us and not chiggers.

 

[bobpbx]

I have never had chiggers in the pines. They all turned out to be tick larvae, and I disagree with you Sue, I don't think they are in the pines. I got chiggers once in Maryland. That's it.

Boyd: the term walk in the park is often used in the negative, like "hey, those math exams are no walk in the park". So I get what she's saying.

 

[Boyd]

From the same thread I linked to above...

I was out on Saturday and ran into a marble size ball of what I always call chiggers. I used Jessica's lint roller to catch a few and took them to work to examine them under my microscope. And the evidence is clear and Bob is correct that they are ticks. Jessica checked online and found a good photo of a chigger and I can bet that most of us have never had chiggers, we have had ticks.

Ticks & Chiggers--a study

I was out on Saturday and ran into a marble size ball of what I always call chiggers. I used Jessica's lint roller to catch a few and took them to work to examine them under my microscope. And the evidence is clear and Bob is correct that they are ticks. Jessica checked online and found a good...

forums.njpinebarrens.com

Bob: You are probably right about "walk in the (pinelands) park", but that's a pretty strange headline.

 

[bobpbx]

And I wonder where she got those 6 willow trees she planted? The doctor gave her something for the bite, but in no way did they analyze what bit her, and she may be in a development where you can hardly call it the pines.

 

[Boyd]

Back in the 90's, my ex-wife and I went for a walk in the pines and she got what I assumed to be chigger bites on her ankles and legs - looked very similar to bites I'd had many times. She had a bad allergic reaction and went to a dermatologist who gave her something that helped (cortisone?) but he told her he'd never heard of chiggers in the Pines (his office was in Medford). I thought that was very strange.

 

[bobpbx]

Back in the 90's, my ex-wife and I went for a walk in the pines and she got what I assumed to be chigger bites on her ankles and legs - looked very similar to bites I'd had many times. She had a bad allergic reaction and went to a dermatologist who gave her something that helped (cortisone?) but he told her he'd never heard of chiggers in the Pines (his office was in Medford). I thought that was very strange.

You mean you thought it strange at that time, right?

 

[Boyd]

Well, yes (because I thought there were chiggers in the pines). But I don't think he believed her condition was caused by ticks either. Don't really remember, he may have thought it was something like poison ivy / poison oak because she had a terrible time with those in other places where we lived.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

From the same thread I linked to above...

Ticks & Chiggers--a study

I was out on Saturday and ran into a marble size ball of what I always call chiggers. I used Jessica's lint roller to catch a few and took them to work to examine them under my microscope. And the evidence is clear and Bob is correct that they are ticks. Jessica checked online and found a good...

forums.njpinebarrens.com

Bob: You are probably right about "walk in the (pinelands) park", but that's a pretty strange headline.

That's the thread I was thinking of!

 

[Teegate]

Yea, I think we can be pretty certain they are ticks. I still now call them chigger ticks because everyone else call them chiggers. It is too much trouble to explain to anyone.

 

[Boyd]

I don't think so, there are plennnty of chiggers in the pines.

Which brings us back to this... if there are plenty, then where are they?

 

[Sue Gremlin]

We were unundated at the plane crash site near the Carranza memorial. Whoo doggie.

 

[bobpbx]

We were unundated at the plane crash site near the Carranza memorial. Whoo doggie.

Did you get photos? Specimens?

 

[bobpbx]

My friend Gerry Moore sent me these links. Long Island yes, but as he said, the story repeats itself.

1. Chiggers vs. Lone Star Ticks in the Hamptons - Hampton Pest Management
2. Chiggers On Your Legs? Nope. Those Are Lone Star Tick Larvae - 27 East
3. Chiggers vs. Lone Star Ticks on Long Island (tickcontrol.com)
4. Lone Star Tick Larvae Often Mistaken for ‘Chiggers’ on the East End (danspapers.com)
5. Forget chiggers, folks; those are lone star tick larvae making you itch - The Suffolk Times (timesreview.com)
6. Tick-Safe Hiking - (pinebarrens.org)
7. Lone Star Ticks vs. Chiggers – Rhode Island Natural History Survey (rinhs.org)

 

[Teegate]

I think I will spend more time this summer collecting what I find on me and take them to work and look at them under the microscope.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Did you get photos? Specimens?

It was a long time ago, but we did get specimens of adult harvest mites (they are not the bitey stage) from that area. No photos, sorry to say.