Coloradoans asked to mail in ticks as part of a study on tick-borne illnesses
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) – The Colorado Department of Public Health and Education (CDPHE) wants you to mail ticks to them. Yes, you read that right.
As part of a new citizen science program, CDPHE is asking Coloradoans to mail in the ticks they find to determine what types of ticks exist in different regions of the state and the diseases they carry.
If you find a tick, either alive or dead, CDPHE asks you to double bag it in zip-top bags. Then, go to the state’s tick collection website to fill out an online form, where you can indicate where and how the tick was collected.
Officials also ask residents to share their travel history in hopes of understanding where these ticks may have come from.
"Sometimes people who travel will unknowingly bring back one of these invasive tick hitchhikers on themselves, their clothes, or their pets," Dr. Chris Roundy, medical entomologist with the CDPHE’s communicable disease branch, said in a July 12 press release. "We want to prevent these ticks from establishing themselves in Colorado and understand where they came from, which is why travel history is a question on the submission form."
The site then assigns your specimen a unique ID and gives you the address to mail the tick to Denver. Ticks will be identified according to their genus and species, and that data is logged into a tick database.
Officials are watching closely for any ticks not normally found in the state.
“Two types that we monitor closely are Ixodes ticks (also known as black-legged ticks or deer ticks), which can transmit Lyme disease, and Amblyomma americanum (the lone star tick), which can cause alpha-gal syndrome," Roundy said.
