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.
To try to understand that apparent paradox, she looked at transmission of the virus. Adult ticks lay thousands of eggs on blades of grass. The larvae and nymphs are lower to the ground, and tend to find mice to feed on, while adults typically feed on deer. Larvae, which are naïve to ...
