The start of May brings with it “peak” tick activity season, which will last through June, according to New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services public health information officer Tom Brown.
Brown wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth that New Hampshire hospitals are seeing an increase in emergency department visits from tick bites, as well as a rise in the incidence of tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease, anaplasmosis — which causes flu-like symptoms — and babesiosis — which infects red blood cells.
New Hampshire has one of the highest rates of Lyme disease in the country, according to the Center for Disease Control. The disease first arrived in the Granite State in 1985, having spread northward from Connecticut. Today, approximately 60% of black-legged ticks in New Hampshire carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
Climate change is accelerating northward expansion of the black-legged tick. The CDC confirmed the presence of the Lone-Star tick — which can carry ehrlichiosis, Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness and Rocky Mountain spotted fever — in the state.
Biology professor Matthew Ayres explained in an interview that ticks do not disappear during the year but go through different “life stages.”
During questing, which begins in early spring, ticks sit “up on the edge of a grass blade, perhaps with their front tarsi out, waving in the air, hoping for some animal to pass by and then they latch on,” Ayres explained.
Lyme disease is most commonly transmitted during a tick’s “questing period,” Ayres explained.
“The disease gets transmitted when a tick in its previous quest fed upon an animal that was carrying Lyme disease, and then it can transmit the bacterium to the next host,” Ayres said.
Ayres said ticks engage in questing in their larval and adult stages. They can transmit Lyme disease in both, and while adult-stage ticks are “relatively large,” those in the nymph stage can be easier to miss due to their size and thus pose the “highest” risk.
Brown said that if you find a tick on yourself, you should “remove it as soon as possible with a pair of tweezers to lower your risk of illness.”
Outdoor Programs Office director Katie Colleran said the OPO does “proactive messaging” this time of year for tick prevention.
Colleran said she believes it is important to talk to first-year students about ticks in a way that “doesn’t scare” them, especially those “who might not be used to ticks.” She said that ticks are not “out and about” during First-Year Trips — which begin in early September — but trip leaders are still trained on “prevention.”
“We do walk our trip leaders through — they’re trained to deal with any kind of medical thing going on with the students on their trip,” Colleran said.
Cabin and Trail trip leader-in-training and gear stewardship chair Knowl Stroud ’29, who grew up in the Northeast and around ticks, said she believes it is important to give a “tick education baseline” at the start of every first-year trip.
“It’s important to just tell people that there could be ticks, tell them what the risks are and tell them how they can check for ticks and mitigate those risks,” she said.
Despite the risk posed by tick-borne illnesses, Ayres said that people “need not be panicked.”
“It’s a wonderful time of year to go out and go for walks, go bird watching,” Ayres said. “People shouldn’t be deterred from doing that. It’s just after you do it, check yourself for ticks.”
Students concerned about tick exposure or Lyme disease can refer to Dick’s House or Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center for further help.
Jared Gonzalez Arce '29 is a news reporter from California majoring in history.
