Oak Ridge, TN March 15, 2009 This is a heavily-cropped photo. These two tiny creatures (1mm) were floating on water in an abandoned cooler on a soccer field! The mites (right) were feeding on the springtails. They were quite a sight to see with their neon-orange legs!
Oak Ridge, TN June 2007 Ticks are arachnids (because they have 8 legs), but they are NOT spiders. They do not make webs or spin silk. The good news about Lone Star tick is it doesn't carry Lyme disease (see next photo), the bad news is it does carry Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever! Lone Star ticks get their name from the single white dot on the abdomen. We found this one crawling on a beatsheet during science camp. There is a large population of white-tailed deer in the area, they are one of the main food sources for these ticks. They are happy to take a few microliters of blood from a human too! It is hard to believe that an animal can have only 3 meals in its lifetime, but that is what ticks do. They hatch into a 6-legged larva (although I must say I have not bothered to count the legs when I pull one of those little suckers off!), eat a blood meal, molt into an 8-legged nymph, eat again and molt into an adult. Then up to 3 years later the adults mate, the female eats another blood meal, she lays thousands of eggs, and finally, she dies. Ticks inject an anticoagulant into their victim to keep the blood flowing while they eat. Unfortunately, that substance can trigger allergic reactions in some people. I'm one of them, I will have severe itching for a month at the site of the bite of even the tiniest tick. Here is a good website to explain the life cycle of ticks: Tick Biology
Lone Star Tick This tick fell out of a shrub when I was showing the kids at science camp how to collect insects and other critters into a beat sheet. It is easy to see the single dot ("Lone Star") in the center of the abdomen. These ticks use their long front legs to grab onto passing prey. 2008 has been an unusually "ticky" year!
