Along with registering individuals within the survey, researchers are gathering tick samples in main parks throughout New York Metropolis to know the prevalence of Lyme carriers within the metropolis’s city core.
Within the first week of June, when tick presence was anticipated to be at its peak, analysis assistants from Diuk-Wasser’s lab set out throughout the town’s parks gathering the primary tranche of knowledge for the survey. The researchers aimed to raised perceive the quantity and species of ticks current within the parks.
Among the many parks they visited had been Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, the place they trawled the bottom with a corduroy drag material, inspecting it for ticks each 10 meters. The corduroy materials is designed to be a proxy for animal fur, intentionally engaging to ticks. They discovered no ticks in Prospect Park, which was anticipated as a result of the wildlife (particularly deer) that carry ticks and change into unwitting vectors for Lyme not often, if ever, enter the park. However in Highland Park in Queens, the group discovered two blacklegged ticks, which carry Lyme disease.
Within the coming days, researchers from Diuk-Wasser’s lab will return to the parks to enroll park guests in surveys to raised perceive the general public’s information of the specter of ticks and its have an effect on on folks’s conduct outdoor.
“We’re assured that by the top of the summer season, we’ll have a a lot deeper understanding of each the tick presence within the metropolis’s parks, and the way residents do (or don’t) take motion to guard themselves,” Diuk-Wasser stated.
SOURCE: Columbia University
