Ticks & Chiggers--a study

[Sue Gremlin]

They are almost impossible to see without magnifying them. Only the larvae bite people, and once you feel the itch, they are long gone, so it's difficult unless you know they are there. I can tell you firsthand, they exist in South Jersey.

To find them, walk through waist-high scrub in June/July, and then that evening, stick clear packing tape to your waist and ankles and scan it with a microscope.

 

[bobpbx]

To find them, walk through waist-high scrub in June/July, and then that evening, stick clear packing tape to your waist and ankles and scan it with a microscope.

Last year, in Dover Forge, I used an old tee shirt spread out on square cardboard dangling from a fishing pole. They turned out to be Lone Star larva or nymphs.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Wow, look at them. That's terrifying.

 

[manumuskin]

Maybe I don't understand what you're saying here? I'm in Southwest Atlantic County, not far from the Cumberland and Cape May County lines. There at lots of chiggers here - as bad as anywhere I've been. When I first moved here in 2006, my next door neighbor asked if I knew what chiggers were and warned that they were really bad here. Like a know-it-all, I told him I knew all about chiggers. But when summer came I realized he was right - they are just terrible here!

Boyd,
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.

 

[manumuskin]

But I do refuse to refer to Northern Water snakes as Water Moccasins

 

[Boyd]

OK Al, now I remember that discussion. You could be right... all I know is that something I can't see loves to nibble on my ankles in the summer! A couple years ago I picked up an interesting little piece of wood down by the creek in the summer. A bunch of tiny, almost invisible little critters started biting my hand and fortunately I was able to rinse them off in the creek.

I assumed those were chiggers, but maybe they were tick larvae? But they looked exactly the way Guy has described chiggers as "dirt that moves". That's really the only time I've seen what I thought were chiggers.

 

[Sue Gremlin]

Boyd,
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.

Tick larvae also have six legs. Chiggers are trombiculid mites (arachnids) that can look like ticks, but smaller.

 

[enormiss]

Agree, that T shirt is terrifying!

 

[manumuskin]

Tick larvae also have six legs. Chiggers are trombiculid mites (arachnids) that can look like ticks, but smaller.

arachnids with six legs?

 

[Sue Gremlin]

arachnids with six legs?

Yeah, the larvae have six legs. Nymphs and adults have eight. I think they do that just to confuse people.
They're jerks on every level.

 

[46er]

I think they do that just to confuse people.

Ole Ma nature loves doing that. And we humanoid's think we are so smart

 

[manumuskin]

OK Al, now I remember that discussion. You could be right... all I know is that something I can't see loves to nibble on my ankles in the summer! A couple years ago I picked up an interesting little piece of wood down by the creek in the summer. A bunch of tiny, almost invisible little critters started biting my hand and fortunately I was able to rinse them off in the creek.

I assumed those were chiggers, but maybe they were tick larvae? But they looked exactly the way Guy has described chiggers as "dirt that moves". That's really the only time I've seen what I thought were chiggers.

If you walk down old grassy roads in summer and your ankles start itching look at your socks( if their white) and you'll see tiny maroon dots moving on them or even on your ankles. Once you scratch them they come off but the damage is done once they bite you.Your body's reaction to the bite produces the itch from what I hear.Already starting the healing process.All I know is whatever they are I hate them from the depths of my soul.Worse then any other thing found in the woods including ants,wasps and flies.

 

[46er]

All I know is whatever they are I hate them from the depths of my soul.Worse then any other thing found in the woods including ants,wasps and flies.

The gift that keeps on giving

 

[Jersey Jeff]

My legs were covered in tick nymph bites 2 weeks ago near Hawkins. No adult ticks, but lots and lots of nymphs. I pulled them off me but they still itch :-(

 

[bobpbx]

My legs were covered in tick nymph bites 2 weeks ago near Hawkins. No adult ticks, but lots and lots of nymphs. I pulled them off me but they still itch :-(

Ice them, every 2 hours for 1-2 minutes.

 

[Diablo2424]

Here's a good article on Ticks and the rise of them across the country in recent years.

https://www.wired.com/story/we-have-no-idea-how-bad-the-us-tick-problem-is/?mbid=synd_digg

 

[Teegate]

https://www.northjersey.com/story/n...-first-carrying-longhorned-tick-us/825744002/

 

[Boyd]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/...the-tick-borne-meat-allergy-could-reveal.html

"In this and other respects, meat allergy is upending longstanding assumptions about how allergies work. Its existence suggests that other allergies could be initiated by arthropod bites or unexpected exposures. It also raises the possibility that other symptoms often reported by patients that clinicians might dismiss because they don’t fit into established frameworks — gluten intolerance, for example, or mucus production after drinking milk — could, similarly, be conditions that scientists simply don’t understand yet."

 

[46er]

https://whyy.org/npr_story_post/ticks-and-lyme-disease-3-factors-determine-risk-of-infection/

As it turns out, the chance of catching Lyme disease from an individual tick ranges from zero to roughly 50 percent, according to Mather. The exact probability depends on three factors: the tick species, where it came from and how long the tick was feeding.

 

[Boyd]

One scientist's radical idea to engineer mice and stop Lyme disease

https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/27/te...ally-modified-mice-ticks-nantucket/index.html

"Once he's isolated the genetic code for Lyme immunity, Wesemann can edit it into the genome of many more mice. Those mice will pass the immunity on to their offspring. Raise a few hundred thousand of these mice, release them into the wild, wait a few generations, and, in theory, no more mice with Lyme.
.................
Oh, and no one's ever turned a genetically-modified mammal loose in the wild before. Doing that will require more than time. It will require a vote."