Battling The Tick Boom

Due to our changing climate, the parasites are on the rise in Canada—and you no longer need to be in the wilderness to risk getting bitten. Here’s what you should know about taking on the disease-carrying critters.

- Jill Buchner

HOW TO SPOT A TICK

Unlike insects, which have six legs, ticks are eight-legged arthropods: they have jointed legs and an exoskeleton, similar to crabs and scorpions. Kateryn Rochon, assistant professor in veterinary entomology at the University of Manitoba, suggests looking for the one-piece tear drop-shaped body—this sets ticks apart from spiders, which have a differentiated abdomen and head. There are about 40 species of ticks in Canada, but luckily only a few typically bite humans.

THE NEW TICK IN TOWN

Recently, there have been reports of ticks that cause meat allergies showing up in Canada. Known as Lone Star ticks, they are native to the United States. In humans, a bite can lead to a twenty fold increase in alpha-gal antibodies— alpha-gal being a sugar molecule found in red meat. So the next time you order a steak, you could have a nasty allergic reaction, from hives to anaphylaxis. Luckily, the species is rare on this side of the border— the few ticks that have arrived in Eastern Canada and Ontario probably hitched a ride on migratory birds.

RISING TEMPERATURES, RISING POPULATIONS

Tick populations have been expanding for the past few decades, even infiltrating northern Saskatchewan, the city of Yellowknife and larger urban centres such as Toronto. Tick dragging in that city’s Rouge Valley area in 2017 came up with 122 of the black legged variety, 63 of which tested positive for the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Climate change has a lot to do with the surge, says David Lieske, associate professor at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. Lieske co-authored a 2018 study published in