JOHNSON, Vt. (WCAX) – Is there a way to help control the tick population by targeting invasive plants? A team of researchers at Vermont State University just received funding to help them find the answers.
Team members search through the woods for ticks to bring back to VTSU to study.
“We are looking at the correlation between blacklegged tick nymph density and invasive plant species,” said Luke Walters, a junior at VTSU.
It’s research that co-investigator Bill Landesman says will help broaden understanding of which plant species ticks prefer and which ones they avoid.
“Ultimately try a management approach to try to reduce the number of invasive plants and hopefully reduce the number of ticks at the same time,” said Landesman, an associate professor of biology at VTSU.
The work is part of a $1.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation awarded to the University of Maine and Vermont State University to research ticks and invasive plant species.
Tick-borne diseases are a rising concern in Vermont, something undergrad researcher Samantha Bedore knows well, as her family has been impacted by Lyme disease.
“It’s been a great learning experience, learning a bunch of different techniques in the lab, and just meaningful work,” said Bedore, a sophomore.
Bedore works in the lab after the ticks are found where she and other students wash them and then extract and amplify their DNA.
“Using the amplified DNA we’ll test to see if the ticks are positive for borrelia burgdorferi which is the pathogen that causes Lyme disease,” Bedore explained.
But first, Walters and other students comb through the woods next to the Johnson and Castleton campuses to find the bugs.
“We’re doing this thing called flagging and we’re also doing this study of dragging 100 meter by 100 meter cloth along the ground and we’re just seeing how many ticks we can find in a 100 meter transit,” Walters said.
If the data proves a connection, land managers can then know which plants need to be destroyed, which in turn could reduce tick populations and help with forest and public health.