More ticks..

Jun 17, 2017 • 9:35 PM UTC

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Microorganisms

Manu Prakash

I am a faculty at Stanford and run the Prakash Lab at Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Foldscope community is at the heart of our Frugal Science movement - and I can not tell you how proud I am of this community and grassroots movement. Find our work here: http://prakashlab.stanford.edu

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After my last find of a beautiful tick on a beach (an unusual place I had thought); I have been spotting ticks almost everywhere.
My last post about ticks is here:
How ticks come for a ride?
This time, I was enjoying a lazy afternoon with my kids in my own grass backyard (Glenn Canyon, SF); and decided to look down in the grass. And very quickly, I found a very small insect running around. I was excited and picked it up by hand; and let it crawl on me for a few minutes – but soon moved it to a glass slide before it made any tries to bite me.
Here is a “live” video of what I saw. Very similar to my old post; I again saw specialized tarsal structures at the leg – possible specialization to attach to mammals over long periods of time.

If anyone can help identify and put a definite “microscopic” key to identifying ticks – that would be very handy. So far, everything I found was very “macroscopic”. With this level of detail from the foldscope – I know we can do better.
Here are a few pictures:

Keep your eyes open and always look for ticks during peak season. If you happen to know any websites where “tick” sightings are recorded and mapped; I would love to see that.
Keep exploring.
Manu
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