NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Old Dominion University has hundreds and hundreds of ticks lining freezers, refrigerators and even the cabinets of its lab.
All of the ticks serve as research tools, and they’re from right here in our area.
“The ticks we collect are from the vegetation. Ticks aren’t found in trees,” said graduate student Alexis White
They gather them by running a flag across the ground.
They say in the past they’ve collected more than 100,000 ticks in the area.
“95% have been lone star ticks,” said White.
White says they also find a smaller number of American dog ticks, deer ticks and Gulf Coast ticks.
White says they usually don’t find a lot of the Gulf Coast ticks. Sometimes they only collect 20 in a year, but there is a specific spot researchers are finding them this year.
“Out on the barrier islands they’re actually finding quite a few, so they’re doing this whole survey to look at the relatedness to find where this tick is coming from and tracking its movement,” said White.
Professor Wayne Hynes says you do have to be careful if your are bitten by a tick because they carry pathogens that, when transferred to humans, cause disease.
Even ticks that are smaller than a seed can carry pathogens, like the deer tick that can transmit Lyme disease in humans.
So what do you do if you get bitten?
Use something like tweezers and pull the tick straight out.
And as much as you never want to see that tick again, Hynes says to keep it.
“Put your tick in a Ziploc bag, put it in your freezer, you can always take it to your doctor and have it tested,” said Hynes.
When you have the actual tick that bit you it’s easier to identify if the tick is carrying any bacteria or viruses.