Representatives of the MV Tick Program Patrick Roden-Reynolds and Dick Johnson held an educational talk with about a dozen attendees this week on rising lone star tick populations on the Island, and about the threat of so-called “larval tick bombs.”
The event was held Tuesday at Aquinnah Town Hall, and sponsored by the Aquinnah Public Library.
Over the past decade, the MV Tick Program has conducted hundreds of tick surveys on the Vineyard as they study the rise in lone star tick populations. In 2019, Tisbury was the sole town where no lone star ticks were found, out of 11 surveys there. But in 2022, lone star ticks were found in 36 percent of Tisbury’s surveys.
The results of the 2022 Lone Star Tick Count (see map) show several properties with 16 to 50 ticks or more in Aquinnah and Chappaquiddick, and occurrences of 15 or fewer ticks in other island towns. That’s a steady increase from a decade ago.
While lone star ticks are more common than they were in the 2011–17 surveys — in which entire towns showed none or almost no lone star ticks, and just two properties had more than 25 ticks — Johnson said that there is no way to precisely predict any tick populations on the Vineyard.
A primary difference between lone star ticks and the other human-affecting Vineyard ticks, namely deer ticks (also known as black-legged ticks) and dog ticks, is that lone star bites can cause alpha-gal syndrome (AGS). The syndrome is an allergy to alpha-gal, a carbohydrate present in meat and dairy. AGS can last a few months to several years. The symptoms of the syndrome also vary from person to person. One person could get indigestion, while others might suffer from anaphylaxis just hours after eating an animal product.
Lone star ticks, which arrived in Aquinnah and Chappaquiddick ten to 12 years ago, hunt by sensing exhaled carbon dioxide, and can travel 30 feet to a host. This hunting method contrasts to the “questing” of dog, deer ticks, and sometimes lone star ticks. A questing tick will wait for a host, arms outstretched, on an object such as a blade of grass.
Lone star ticks can also be found in forests, leaf litter, mowed lawns, road shoulders, and more. Deer ticks, by contrast, prefer leaf litter, and are not a concern in mowed lawns. No tick, said Johnson, can survive on clothes put through the dryer, but they will survive a wash cycle.
Halfway through the event, one audience member noticed a tiny, arachnid attendee on the floor, and summoned Johnson. “It’s a female dog tick,” said Johnson, who promptly smushed it and escorted it outside.
The two tick experts passed around a slide of lint roller paper with a so-called “tick bomb,” which is a mass of tick larvae. A tick bomb can have hundreds of larvae, and can look similar to dirt on one’s clothes. Lone star tick bombs are most common in August through October, and can trigger alpha-gal sensitivity. Those sensitive to alpha-gal do not necessarily experience symptoms amounting to AGS.
Roden-Reynolds also highlighted prevention, recommending the insecticide permethrin. His clothes were treated with permethrin after his recent field work. Roden-Reynolds says the preventive, which he applies to his clothes the night before use, “is like walking on hot lava for [ticks].” It can incapacitate a lone star tick in 30 seconds of contact, and kills them in one minute.
Though socks and shoes are the bare minimum for permethrin application, Roden-Reynolds says treating pants is the most important, as adult lone star ticks can quickly travel upward past treated shoes or socks. “They’re the cheetahs of the tick world,” said Johnson.
Lone star ticks specifically do not feed on smaller mammals such as mice, and rely heavily on the Island’s deer population for food and mating opportunities. Generally, fewer ticks are found in droughtlike, hotter conditions, and each year they are most common in summer months.
Despite efforts to increase awareness and lower illness, the Vineyard remains a tick-borne disease hotspot. Of 10,000 hospital emergency department visits, 50 on the Vineyard and Nantucket this year were for tick-borne disease, according to the latest Tick Exposure and Tick-borne Disease Syndromic Surveillance Report from the state Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences. That rate is roughly 10 times the average rate of all other Massachusetts counties.
