Is the tick problem getting worse, or does it just seem that way at this time every year?
Fighting back involves a lot of individual strategies: tucking pant legs in socks, using bug spray (while hating it), obsessively doing full-body checks at the end of a summer day and building deer fences. Yet the public as a whole has been ineffective in dealing with the plague of black-legged (deer) ticks, which spread Lyme disease, a problem linked to, among other things, the overpopulation of deer, which the ticks feed on. What is important to know about ticks and their environment, and what steps might be taken to control them? Here is what the experts say:
- Thomas Mather, professor of public health entomology
- Felicia Keesing biology professor
- Richard S. Ostfeld, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
- William L. Krinsky, entomologist
- Daniel E. Sonenshine, Old Dominion University