Tick Talk: January 2025

What Makes Ticks Stick

Ticks produce a bioadhesive in their saliva that transforms into a solid cement cone, anchoring the tick to its host. This helps a tick attach to its host for as long as days. This unique adhesive is in direct contact with living skin, unlike other bioadhesives used by animals like mussels or spiders. Tick saliva is rich in glycine-rich proteins (GRPs), which strengthen the cement cone and increase its insolubility during feeding.

Researchers confirmed that GRPs in tick saliva can phase separate, a process where proteins concentrate and form distinct structures. Experiments showed that adding salts to GRPs enhanced phase separation and stickiness, mimicking natural conditions in tick saliva. Insights into tick saliva’s adhesive mechanisms could lead to developments like anti-tick vaccines and bioadhesive medical glues. Studying natural bioadhesives offers a sustainable approach to creating innovative solutions. Scientists aim to explore how different GRPs in tick saliva interact to form the cement cone. Understanding how ticks detach from their adhesive could reveal further biological and practical insights.

Ticks and Horses

“Horses aren’t the preferred hosts for fleas like dogs, cats and foxes are,” says Laura Stern, DVM, DABVT, director of training and quality assurance for the?ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center. “The reason horses aren’t commonly affected by fleas, but do get ticks, is simple: They’re in places where they commonly encounter ticks, but not fleas. Fleas like dark areas, like dens. Those aren’t the places where horses like to be. However, ticks like long grass and wooded areas—places where horses are commonly found—making them a common target for ticks.”

Ticks thrive in tall grasses, wooded areas, and shady spots near water, common environments for horses to explore and graze. Ticks frequently attach to horses and can transmit diseases after feeding for a period. Ticks can cause a variety of issues for horses including itchiness, hair loss, and skin irritation. They can also cause more serious conditions for horses including infections, anemia, and diseases like Lyme disease, equine granulocytic anaplasmosis, and equine piroplasmosis. Signs that a horse could be sick with a tick-borne illness include raised bumps on the skin, swelling in joints, hair loss, lethargy, head-shyness, reluctance during haltering, pale gums, fever, weakness or wobbliness.

To prevent tick-borne illness in horses, mow tall grass and remove weeds where they graze to avoid idea tick habitats. You can put fly boots on them to create a physical barrier from questing ticks. Limit horses access to wooded areas by adding boundaries between un-mowed woods and pastures. Prevent wildlife, especially deer, from entering pastures. You can use permethrin-based repellents or spot-on treatments for horses, and remember to maintain tick preventatives for all pets accessing barns. Inspect horses daily for ticks, especially after spending time outdoors. Ticks hide in warm spots on their bodies, so remember to check their chest, belly, flanks, mane, tail, and ears. If you find a tick on a horse, use gloves and tweezers to grasp the tick near the head, pulling it out steadily at a 90-degree angle. Clean the site with mild soap and dispose of the tick(s) by flushing them down the toilet.

Long-horned Ticks

Native to Southeast Asia, the long-horned tick was first identified in the United States in 2017 in New Jersey, although it likely arrived earlier, closer to the year 2010. In 2025, it has now spread to at least 259 counties across 21 states. What makes long-horned ticks unique, is that females are able to reproduce without males. Each female lays 2,000-4,000 eggs on her own. Their broad host range is also unique, feeding on anything from livestock, to wildlife like birds and deer, to house pets, to humans. It is less common for these ticks to bite humans, but if they do they can transmit rare virususes such as Powassan virus, Heartland virus and the Bourbon virus. Longhorned ticks are more dangerous to animal hosts, whom they bite more often. They can cause severe infections such as Theileria orientalis that lead to anemia in livestock and pets.

Tick-borne viruses may transmit from tick to host within hours or minutes, while bacterial and protozoal pathogens may take days. Existing tick-control products, including isoxazoline drugs (for example, NexGard?), are effective against this species. Research is ongoing into anti-tick vaccines and vaccines for tick-borne pathogens. The challenge in managing long-horned ticks, is the difficulty to contain or eradicate the species due to its reproductive capacity and wide host range. Females can lay up to 4,000 eggs without males, and they never run out of food.

Tick-killing Fungus Research

A potential form of tick control that could limit the spread of Lyme disease is being studied at a Nova Scotia University.?Luís Anholeto, a researcher at Acadia University in Wolfville, is examining a type of fungus that occurs naturally in soil and has been found to kill black-legged and American dog ticks.?Anholeto discovered that ticks, newly collected for research, were dying after coming into contact with the fungus. Anholeto initially noticed the species of fungi known as Clonostachys rosea around Coldbrook in the Annapolis Valley. He received a grant to continue to study the fungus at Acadia's tick research lab, a joint project led by associate chemistry professor Nicoletta Faraone and associate biology professor Laura Ferguson.?

"Our lab is dedicated to finding innovative solutions for tick management and our focus is basically on using natural products for development of repellents," said Anholeto.

While the lab studies a variety of biological elements related to ticks, including how climate change is increasing their population, the research team has been determined to find different methods to control them.?The research has become particularly important since every area in the province is now deemed to be at high risk for Lyme disease, which is caused by bacteria spread through the bite of an infected black-legged tick.

Anholeto says the fungus could provide a more sustainable approach to tick management than previous methods used to kill ticks, like synthetic acaricide sprays.?"These are a little harsher approaches that need to be used with discretion because they can harm beneficial insects like pollinators or other species that are good for our ecosystem," Faraone said. "(The fungus) is environmentally sustainable."