The Northeast’s and upper Midwest’s temperate environment allow them to survive.”Īccording to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Lyme disease is a bacterial infection carried by the blacklegged tick, also called the deer tick. Ticks aren’t very good at surviving and adapting to dry heat or desert-like heat. “We have high relative humidity rates, and that allows ticks to extract moisture from the air to survive, so they don’t dry out. “If you look at areas that have high rates of tick-borne illnesses and tick exposures, it’s the Northeast and upper Midwest - and a lot of that has to do with our climate,” Chinnici said. Additional information generated by the tick prediction models relate to weather. Predicting high-risk tick locations is just the beginning. “While a lot of people might think they’re most likely to encounter a tick in a state park,” Chinnici said, “in reality the most common exposure is in your own backyard.” The results, she said, may be eye-opening for many. “We’ve been using a statistical approach to be able to predict where a tick would crawl and attach, based upon the type of activity you’ve been participating in.” “ is giving us a lot of valuable key information that we can turn around and use to educate the public,” Chinnici said. Pennsylvania has had the highest incidence of Lyme disease in the country in 11 of the past 12 years according to CDC data.Ĭhinnici, a certified wildlife forensic scientist who also has a doctorate in public health, has conducted research at the lab for eight years. The lab is based at East Stroudsburg University and partially funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Nicole Chinnici, laboratory director for the Northeast Wildlife DNA Laboratory, home of the PA Tick Research Lab. This would be the first study - the largest sample size in any given state,” said Dr. “We are trying to be on the leading edge of finding the next best way to combat the health crisis. That’s important because Pennsylvania is predicted to get warmer and wetter as a result of climate change, and ticks thrive in those conditions. The full study, expected to be released this summer, is not only compiling the tick intel, but is building prediction models designed to help reduce human exposure to ticks, and therefore lower future Lyme disease rates. The PA Tick Research Lab, one of only three labs nationwide engaged in tick testing and research, is analyzing data from 30,000 tick exposures in Pennsylvania from 2019-2021. The largest study of its kind - focused on tiny ticks - is underway in Pennsylvania. StateImpact Pennsylvania convened the collaboration WITF is a Climate Solutions partner. This story was produced as part of Climate Solutions, a collaboration focused on community engagement and solutions-based reporting to help Central Pennsylvania move toward climate literacy, resilience and adaptation.
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