From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

If warmer climates breed more ticks, why aren’t we who live in warmer regions overrun with the nasty things?

Take it from a Canadian, ticks aren’t nice – and climate change means they’re thriving in the UK

Stephen Buranyi
Wed 5 Apr 2023 23.59 AEST

England and Scotland are experiencing a tick-borne virus outbreak. We don’t know the causes, but we know rising temperatures will mean more of them.

Where I’m from, you can’t be considered a responsible outdoor person unless you’re willing to inspect your father’s naked body for ticks. Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada, has the dubious honour of being among the tick-iest places in the world. Surely these things are hard to measure, but reputable scientists claim it has the highest tick-to-person ratio in the country, and, at about one case of Lyme disease for every 1,000 residents per year, the highest incidence of Lyme disease as well. Walking outside on anything besides cut grass or concrete is likely to yield multiple tiny, near-indestructible arachnids that immediately make an upward dash for a warm crevice at the knee, armpit or often, groin, to burrow into. Finding and removing them can require a mirror and some contortions, or a helpful and unsqueamish friend or family member.

Things are – thankfully – not quite so bad in the UK. But the recent outbreakof potentially deadly tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) in England and Scotland is a reminder that ticks are getting worse here, as well. The first suspected incidence of the disease in the UK was in 2019, and cases of Lyme disease also appear to be increasing over the past few years.

Studies have shown several tick species in Europe becoming more numerous, and moving further north. And in the UK, Public Health England’s Tick Surveillance Scheme has found ticks expanding their range across the UK. Rewilding by expanding tree and brush cover, and introducing more deer and other wild animals, can increase the tick population. But a huge driver of the recent exponential expansion of ticks into the northern hemisphere is climate change.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/05/canada-ticks-uk-climate-change

Are there more ticks in warm climates? Sure – but if ticks are a problem in Canada, a warm climate is hardly essential to their survival.

So why aren’t the homes and gardens of people like myself who live in the subtropics overrun with ticks? The answer of course is warmer weather also encourages huntsman spiders and lizards and other creatures which capture and eat ticks.

There are still a few ticks around – the little monster pictured at the top of this page bit me somewhere I’d prefer not to mention while I was out gardening. But we have this invention called insect repellent, which if it contains lots of DEET works just as well on ticks as mosquitoes. Spraying yourself with bug repellent seems a lot less embarrassing than the Nova Scotia practice of regularly inspecting naked family members.