Tick trapping has a good first season in 2020

Part of the work we do at the Ixodes Outreach Project is monitoring and studying ticks, which involves going out into the field and trying to capture ticks where they live and feed.

This season we experimented with a new collection method, tick traps.  Our traps are simple in design, but seemed to yield good results for their first season.  We unfortunately didn't get them rolled out until a little past peak Ixodes scapularis season, but every time we put out the traps we caught at least one tick of some species.   

Here you see our undergraduate researchers building our traps from small Styrofoam coolers.  We tried two designs, one with holes at the bottom for CO2 to diffuse through, and one with holes near the top.  We wrapped the sides of our top-hole version and created a short "skirt" which flared out from the bottom of the cooler with the same fabric our drag cloths are made from to provide a good grip for our climbing and questing ticks.  For the bottom-hole style we simply set these on top of a square of this same fabric and weighed it down with stones to help prevent it being flipped up by wind.

Once the traps were assembled, they were filled with dry ice pellets, which are frozen CO2 gas.  Other researchers have suggested that ticks can sense CO2 breathed out by potential prey and seem to be attracted to it during questing.

The traps were left overnight (approximately 18-24 hours) in locations were we frequently catch ticks during dragging.

A male Dermacentor variabilis tick stuck to the sticky side of the duct tape holding the fabric to the top-hole trap is shown in this last photo near the edge of the duct tape.

These simple traps are reusable, and fairly inexpensive.  Next spring we hope to have our traps out early in the season and test their effectiveness when questing ticks are at peak activity.  The idea is to continue to refine our trap design and potentially launch a citizen science project where we can provide traps to community members who are willing to help us capture ticks for our research.  If funding and refining our trap goes well, we hope to offer traps to the community within the next year or two.  Stay tuned!

Photos and text by C. Fisher