Guinea fowl and free-range chickens are popular folk control for ticks. A 2024 Journal of Medical Entomology study (Release the Hens) found no measurable reduction in lone star tick populations or pathogen prevalence on properties with guinea fowl. They will eat ticks they encounter; they will not seek out questing nymphs in leaf litter.
Hard ticks find hosts by questing: climbing onto grass blades or low vegetation, anchoring with the back legs, and waving the front legs…
Folk wisdom holds that ticks fall out of trees onto people - this is wrong. Ticks cannot jump, fly, or drop from height; they quest on…
Tick tubes were developed by Sam Telford and Andrew Spielman's group at Harvard in the late 1980s. The original Massachusetts trials of…
A single tick species, Amblyomma americanum, transmits ehrlichiosis from Ehrlichia chaffeensis and E. ewingii, tularemia, Heartland virus,…
A 2009 laboratory study by Felicia Keesing and colleagues placed larval ticks on captive opossums and found the animals groomed off and…
Haemaphysalis leporispalustris feeds almost exclusively on cottontail rabbits and hares and seldom bites humans. It is nevertheless a key…