Tick circle of life

To help us better understand the Lyme disease transmission process, we need to study ticks.  This year we have managed to capture a live, fully engorged female Ixodes scapularis tick.  We have been monitoring the process of laying eggs.  A single female can lay as many as 2000 eggs.  Here is a photo of our specimen:

Engorged female Ixodes scapularis laying eggs (ruler in background shows mm markers).  Image by C Fisher, May 20, 2020

We are storing the tick in a brown bottle, which gives everything in our photo an amber-brown color.  The grape-like shape to the left is the engorged female tick, and he eggs are to the right of her head (the eggs have piled up and covered her head).  After laying all the eggs, the female dies.

It took approximately two weeks from the time the tick was caught until eggs began to appear.  Eggs seemed to be laid over the course of several days to a week.  

-C. Fisher, photos by C. Fisher