Hate ticks? Save deer

If you thought it made sense to decrease disease-carrying ticks in your area by removing the deer that harbor ticks, Sarah Perkins has some news for you. Perkins, a postdoc in the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University, recently looked at studies in which researchers removed deer from large areas, called deer exclosures, using deer-proof fencing of various kinds. The studies tended to find fewer ticks at the nymph stage, which is when they can transmit tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) virus and other diseases. But when they removed deer from smaller areas, they found more nymphs.