Hike? Remember, it’s deer tick season

If you are a hiker or just love the great outdoors, fall is probably your favorite season. Temperatures are cooler but still warm enough, days are still long and insects are mostly less of a nuisance.

But as you set off, University of Rhode Island entomologist Tom Mather wants you to know something: This is also the season for adult black-legged ticks, or deer ticks. They explode on the scene and more than 50% carry the germ of Lyme disease. But fortunately, unlike the tick’s nymphal stage, the adults are big enough to see.

“What people need to keep in mind is that most of nature, including ticks, is seasonal,” says Mather, director of the Center for Vector-Borne Disease and the TickEncounter Resource Center. “Each species of tick has a slightly different season. In this case – adult black-legged ticks – their season is October and November. Then they come out for the first time. They are the freshest and the hungriest.”

Mather, also known as TickGuy, is a veteran of almost four decades of hunting and researching ticks and educating and helping the public to protect themselves from the bloodsuckers. But, he says, many people mistakenly think tick season ends when fall arrives.

“Most people are quite surprised,” he says. “You could do a poll: most people think ticks die when it gets cold. It’s a surprise that October and November are actually the fifth and sixth ‘antsiest’ months of the year.”

The tick situation in Rhode Island and New England has been moderate this year, Mather says. The summer drought likely restricted ticks in the nymphal stage, possibly preventing many of them from obtaining the blood meal that ticks need at each stage of their life cycle (larva, nymph, and adult).

“That could mean there will be fewer tics in the adult stage. But we’ve been surprised in the past,” he says. “I’ve had trouble finding nymphs at many of my regular locations this year. But there were a few locations, particularly along the south coast, that had exceptional numbers of nymph ticks.”

Adult black-legged ticks are just beginning to become active in Rhode Island. Just in the past week, crowdsourced reports of adult deer ticks have come from Ontario, Vermont, Massachusetts and West Virginia, according to data collected by TickEncounter’s TickSpotters program. TickSpotters allows people from all over the world to upload photos of ticks picked by themselves or their pets and get quick tick ID verification and risk assessment, while the crowdsourced information provides data to assess trends in the tick population .

“The first one we got through TickSpotters was September 23 from up in Vermont,” says Mather. “We haven’t seen any in Rhode Island yet, but I’m sure they will come any day.”

While there are about nine types of ticks in Rhode Island and the United States, the most common are black-legged (or deer ticks), solitary star ticks, and American dog ticks. Their lifecycles overlap somewhat, with each phase being most active at different times.

For example, May, the “tickiest” month of the year, has the greatest variety of ticks. Adult deer ticks that have not fed in the fall may still be active, along with deer tick nymphs and adult dog ticks and solitary star ticks being the most active. Solitary star tick nymphs are also found in May. But their seasons are coming to an end. Late August and September are pretty quiet when it comes to ticks, and that lulls people into thinking tick “season” is over, Mather says.

But then – WHAM. From October onwards, people primarily have to take care of adult black-legged ticks. About 85% of TickSpotters’ submissions from across the country in October and November relate to adult black-legged ticks.

And the adult deer ticks you’ll encounter as you wander through the woods began their life cycle in spring 2021. The larvae hatched in June – from eggs laid by adult ticks that had fed the previous fall and survived the winter. After being active in July and August, the larvae detached from their host, survived the winter, and became nymphs the previous spring.

Nymphs fed in May, June, or July, detaching, and metamorphosing into the adults of that fall through a process called molting. One in two (or more) adult deer ticks carry the germ of Lyme disease – compared to about one in four nymphal stage deer ticks earlier in the year. This is because the adult stage has had two opportunities to feed and ingest the Lyme germs from rodents, mainly white-footed mice. They can also pick up germs for babesiosis, anaplasmosis, a disease that causes relapsing fever, and Powassan virus.

Adult black-legged ticks will be active this fall until the temperature stays consistently cold — they won’t go away with the first hard frost. The first frost usually comes between October 10 and 20, Mather says, and after that adult tick numbers actually start to spike until around Thanksgiving.

“By then, it will regularly get cold enough to keep them from being active,” he adds. “It has to be persistently cold, because if it’s below freezing overnight but 40 degrees the next day, those ticks are out.”

Until the cold weather sets in to stay, the center’s TickSmart website has numerous ways to help you and your pet stay safe from ticks — including preparing for a trip into nature, what to do afterward to to look for ticks and how to remove them.

Along with the website, TickEncounter brings prevention into the woods to give you on-the-spot tips, or “just-in-time” learning as Mather calls it. From the summer, around 400 signs – “Warning: tick habitat” – were distributed and attached at the starting points of the hiking trails. Signs have been posted on Rhode Island Land Trust trails and in communities such as North Kingstown and South Kingstown.

The signs have a QR code to give people who venture into the great outdoors instant information — like three things they can do right at the trailhead to reduce their chances of bringing a tick home. (Stickers are also being distributed that contain a QR code with tips for protecting your pets.)

“You can get ‘just in time’ advice from tick experts who will tell you exactly what you probably need to know right now – if you just scan the code,” says Mather.

Get more info on TickEncounter’s latest campaign and Be Ready For Ticks when you head outside this fall.