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10-Minute Presentation

Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology

10-min: MUVE, Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases

Tick (Acari: Ixodidae) trapping as a potential mass surveillance tool

Wednesday, November 12, 2025
3:42 PM - 3:54 PM Pacific
Location: Oregon Convention Center, B114, OCC
Oral Presentation
Surveillance is crucial for monitoring tick populations and assessing disease risk. Currently, dragging/flagging is the only method that meets all four of the CDC’s surveillance objectives for hard ticks: population status by county, presence and prevalence of pathogens, density of infected ticks at a given life stage, and the phenology of host-seeking ticks and tick-human encounters. However, dragging requires personnel trained in both collection and identification of ticks in the field, making it ill-suited to mass surveillance efforts. Carbon dioxide (CO2)-baited traps are only acceptable for determining county status and presence of pathogens but could potentially meet the remaining objectives and be used in large scale monitoring efforts as ticks are immobilized on adhesive and can be identified later. We conducted field experiments comparing CO2 trapping to dragging in southeast Texas, north-central Oklahoma, and central Wisconsin. When corrected for effort, traps almost always caught the most Amblyomma americanum ticks of all life stages per person-hour and were superior or similar to dragging for larvae and nymphs of Ixodes scapularis and adult Dermacentor variabilis. We discuss modifications to the trap, adhesive and lure, as well as experimental requirements to meet these goals.