The U.S. National Tick Collection is on permanent loan to Georgia Southern University (GSU) and is located in the same building as the Institute of Arthropodology and Parasitology. Owned by the Smithsonian, it is the largest collection in the world. Why study ticks?
Small in size, ticks have enormous impact on human health - and on companion animals such as dogs and horses, as well as other livestock. Even blood donations are being screened for some tick-borne disease (TBD). (Most people who are infected by a tick don't show any symptoms. See news story about the Red Cross and babesiosis at this link.)
"Ticks are highly specialized mites," points out Michael McAloon, who studies a group of mites that transmit disease in Southeast Asia. "Some transmit disease that are potentially fatal if not treated. And a lot of people who get the disease are farmers. I am looking at why. There are species that transmit rickettsial diseases, I study the organisms that transmit the disease." A graduate student, McAloon is now a biology teacher at Taft School in Connecticut.
He earned his master's degree at GSU.
"There as there were many entomologically-minded individuals in the department," he notes. "Since I held a strong interest in medical entomology, GSU was the best possible place for me. They do offer tours and are open to the public. People can tour the microscopy room and the collections. They hold specimens of every tick species known to science as well as acting as a depository for practically every scientific paper ever published on ticks."
Lorenza Beati, a Swiss-born associate professor of biology at GSU, is the curator of the U.S. National Tick Collection.
Another center for tick studies is the Center for Disease Control (CDC) National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne and Enteric Diseases, Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, in Colorado.
"It made sense that the research being done has the specimens for the systematics and taxonomy studies. And the Smithsonian, of course, has specimens stored in collections that no one has studied yet."
For scanning with the electron microscope, tick specimens are coated with a thin layer of gold.
"Ticks can be very large; squashing them flat doesn't do them justice. Once coated with gold, every detail is clear. They look like little trophies."
He notes that one such interesting example is the camel tick. "It was so fantastic when I heard that about it - this tick lies in wait for years, because in a desert it may not see camels on a route for long stretches of time, if ever. Once a traveling group appears, the tick races over and feeds on a camel quickly. Just amazing."
For an interesting first-person account about a visit to the tick museum see this link. The writer describes helping collect 24,000 live Ixodes scapularis (black-legged ticks) for "Pfizer to test for a new tick repellent."
A number of European, African and Latin American institutions are working on ticks and tick-borne diseases (TBD) studies of ruminants and proposed the creation of a unique international consortium.
Knowledge will be pooled for an online database, INCO 2, to "facilitate vaccine development and improved diagnostics" and a virtual tick museum will be created share the information contained in the available tick collections and used to "design taxonomic keys and predictive maps for ticks infesting ruminants in the target areas."
