Deer tick
| Deer tick | ||||||||||||
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female deer tick ( Ixodes scapularis ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Ixodes scapularis | ||||||||||||
| Say , 1821 |
The deer tick ( Ixodes scapularis ), also known as the deer tick or black- legged wood tick , is a species of tick from the family of shield ticks that lives in the USA . It is known to be the carrier of Lyme disease .
description
The deer tick is about 3 mm in size and has a dark brown to black color. The adult ticks show a clear sexual dimorphism . The shield that covers the entire body of the male is dark, almost black in color. In the female, as in other tick species, the shield only covers the front part of the body. The protruding rear part of the body is orange to reddish in color.
The genome of the deer tick was jointly sequenced in 2008 by the Broad Institute and the J. Craig Venter Institute. The approximately 2.1 billion base pairs code for around 20,500 genes .
Occurrence
Deer ticks are only found in North America, where they are called deer tick and in some areas also bear tick . They look very similar from the European-based wood tick ( Ixodes ricinus to distinguish) and were therefore often found in the 19th century with this in a common way. It was not until 1911 that the deer ticks were distinguished from the wood tick as a separate subspecies Ixodes ricinus var . However, the German-language name deer tick was often carried over to Ixodes ricinus , the common wood tick, in Europe , because it also parasitizes on mammals such as deer and roe deer. To this day, this often leads to confusion.
development
Like all other shield ticks, the deer tick goes through a development cycle. It develops in three stages from the larva to the nymph to the adult tick. She needs a blood meal for each stage. In the last stage as an adult tick, the females take so much blood from the host that they have about 50 to 100 times their own weight. Then they lay their eggs and perish.
Way of life
Larvae and nymphs parasitize on small mammals. The adult ticks suckle on larger mammals, preferably on white-tailed deer , but also on dogs and cats. Humans can also be attacked.
Vectors of disease
Just like the common wood tick, the deer tick can transmit Lyme disease and early summer meningoencephalitis (TBE), which are dangerous for humans . The Powassan virus , which occurs in the United States , is also transmitted by the deer tick.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Information about Ixodes scapularis at entsept.ufl.edu (English) ( Memento from May 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Genome at NCBI VectorBase .
- ↑ Proteome at UniProt .
- ^ Roger Drummond: Ticks and What You Can Do about Them. 3rd edition, Wilderness Press, Berkeley 2004, ISBN 0-89997-353-1 , p. 23.
Web links
- Information about Ixodes scapularis on health.ri.gov (English) ( Memento of 20 May 2010 at the Internet Archive )