Bugged Out
As local researchers and clinicians continue the fight against Lyme disease , a new tick threat is brewing across Long Island Sound .
Cliff Vanover is a veritable tick magnet . Between his love of hiking and tending a Charlestown property that grazes the borders of the Great Swamp , Vanover has provided the local Ixodidae with countless opportunities for a blood meal . And they have taken them .
By his estimate , “ I used to get fifty , sixty bites a year ,” he says . “ But usually the minute they bite me , they ’ re gone , because I can feel it .”
Skin hypersensitivity notwithstanding , Vanover has contracted Lyme disease five times from encounters with blacklegged — or deer — ticks , and , back in 1995 , a red meat allergy from the bite of a Lone Star tick .
“ One night , after eating a hamburger , I broke out in hives on my hand and soon my body was one solid hive . My throat was tightening up . It was a classic anaphylactic response ,” he says . “ My wife had some heavy-duty antihistamines , so I took one and a hot shower and it went away . I really should have gone to the hospital , but I didn ’ t — tough guy .”
Later , a series of scratch tests at the allergist ’ s office confirmed a reaction to mammalian flesh . “ I had it before they even knew it had anything to do with
28 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l OCTOBER 2022 ticks ,” Vanover says .
Today , scientists know that ticks — the number one carriers of vector-borne illness — are responsible for more than a dozen diseases . In New England , babesiosis , Lyme , ehrlichiosis and anaplasmosis , all carried by the blacklegged tick , are most common . Jannelle Couret , a University of Rhode Island biologist who studies the ecology and biology of tick vectors , says Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that the blacklegged tick is increasing its geographical range as its population grows .
“ This tick can transmit seven known human pathogens ,” she says . “ Now it ’ s expanding within two regions : the Northeast and the north central Midwest . Both areas are expanding toward each other .”
URI entomologist Thomas Mather , who conducted a statewide tick survey for twenty-one years until 2014 , sees another growing regional threat : the rise of the Lone Star tick , so named for the white blotch on the back of the female . Lone Star ticks have long been established in Rhode Island — especially on Prudence Island , where the tick population correlates strongly to that of the deer . But they had never shown up in his samples in any appre-
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION : GETTY IMAGES AND EMILY RIETZEL .