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Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology

10-Minute Paper

MUVE: Veterinary and Forensic Entomology On-Demand Presentations

Public health risk of encountering a host seeking tick at Lake Thunderbird State Park, Norman, OK

On-Demand
On-Demand

Interest in visiting national and state parks have spiked particularly from hikers, bikers, and dog walkers.  While a rise in attendance is advantageous this increased visitation may enable greater contact between people, pets, and pathogen-infected ticks thereby increasing the risk of vector-borne disease. In the United States, Oklahoma has one of the highest annual incidence rates of tick-borne diseases, yet most health departments have minimal abilities to conduct tick surveillance. The objective of this study was to determine risk of encountering ticks on the Yellow, Blue, Red and Yellow Trails at Clear Bay and the Hog Creek Trail at Lake Thunderbird State Park, Norman, OK Feb 4-May 12, 2021. Ticks were collected via flagging in 10-meter segments the entire length (28.31 km) of the trails. We collected 9121 nymph and adult ixodids from February 4 to May 12. Amblyomma americanum comprised the greatest percentage collected (99.06%; 23.81% male, 13.91% female, 62.28% nymphs), followed by Ixodes scapularis (0.89%; 67.90% male, 32.10% female), and finally Dermacentor variabilis (0.05%; 60.00% male, 40.0% female). The risk of encounter (measured as ticks per sweep) varies among the different trails in the park. The Yellow Trail had the largest risk of encountering a tick while the Red Trail had the smallest risk.  A visitor is more than 1.5 times likely to encounter a tick on the Yellow Trail than on the Hog Creek Trail and Blue Trail. That risk increases to more than 10 times when comparing the Yellow Trail to the Red and Green Trails.