A 2009 laboratory study by Felicia Keesing and colleagues placed larval ticks on captive opossums and found the animals groomed off and ate roughly 96 percent of them - leading to the widely cited estimate that one opossum may take thousands of larval ticks out of circulation per season. Field validation has been mixed and the headline number is contested, but the grooming behavior itself is real.
Soft ticks in the genus Ornithodoros can survive years between blood meals and live for a decade or more. A single infected tick can sit…
Dermacentor albipictus is a one-host tick: larva, nymph, and adult all stay on the same animal for the entire roughly year-long cycle. A…
Hard ticks (Ixodidae) take one large blood meal per life stage and stay attached for days. Soft ticks (Argasidae), including Ornithodoros,…
Field studies in the northeastern United States routinely find a single white-footed mouse carrying dozens of attached Ixodes scapularis…
Hard ticks find hosts by questing: climbing onto grass blades or low vegetation, anchoring with the back legs, and waving the front legs…
An unfed adult Ixodes scapularis female weighs about 2 milligrams. Fully engorged she weighs 200 milligrams or more - around 100 times her…