UNDATED (WSAU-WXPR) – The number of reported Lyme Disease cases in Wisconsin has more than doubled in the last 15 years.
The western upper peninsula has also seen increases in the disease in recent years.
Knowing how abundant tick populations are going to be each season is hard to predict.
Unlike some pests like mosquitoes, the weather doesn’t seem to have as big of an impact on populations.
Susan Paskewitz is a professor in the Department of Entomology at UW-Madison. She says one of their best indicators is the wildlife populations the ticks feed off of like white-footed mice. “When those populations are high usually lot of the immature stages get fed and then the following year we anticipate a larger population of these pests. We think that maybe this year is one of those years where there will be a lot of mice out there just because there were lots of acorns last year so it could mean next year could be our boom year.”
Paskewitz says sometimes people mistakenly think there’s a large tick population in a year because they’re finding the larger, adult ticks on them after being in the woods. But she says it’s actually the smaller, immature ticks that pose a greater risk. “The nymphal stage cause they’re so small, those are the ones that are really abundant during June and that we think people often miss them, don’t realize they’ve been bitten. That correlates really well with when we see people get sick.”
This year had the earliest occurrence of a nymphal deer tick that’s ever been recorded, according to Paskewitz. She recommends taking precautions like wearing long pants and shirts and spraying your clothes with repellant to prevent tick bites.
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