The Payoff
I spent the summer of 2017 scouring the hills and mountains of Fresno trying to collect the soft-ticks that vector tick-borne relapsing fever. Sure enough, I made successful collections at popular recreational locations such as Millerton Lake and Woodward Park. In the lab I was able to screen these tick for the bacterial pathogen that causes relapsing fever. It is a relative of Lyme disease but much less studied. All of these ticks were negative for the bacteria which is good for the locals but doesn’t make a compelling story for a research project.
In the lead-up to my graduation from Fresno State I really wanted some nice pictures of my ticks to include in my master’s thesis. Unfortunately, I had processed all my samples during the disease screens. I decided to use the final days of spring break to hit Millerton Lake again for some fresh samples. I was shocked to discover so many ticks out so early in the season. I grabbed a few pictures and began screening the new samples for relapsing fever. Well, there were a couple positive samples. On the morning of my graduation I received confirmation that these ticks were infected!
My mentors and I wrote up this discovery and published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. We are excited to provide an updated record of this particular species of bacteria in ticks from Fresno County, which is something we probably haven’t seen in this area for 80 years!
Science, and particularly research, is fraught with setbacks and hurdles to overcome. What makes discoveries like ours so much more rewarding to share is the hard work and dedication to the project behind the scenes. A published paper is the result of countless hours of figurative, or sometimes literal, blood, sweat, and tears. If you are interested in hearing more about the process of completing a project like this please feel free to reach out.
Live ticks from Millerton Lake were blood fed through artificial membranes. Here, one “hungry” individual appears to be taking blood from an engorged (full) individual. This behavior has been named conspecific hyperparasitism and has been observed in many tick species.