Great AZ Tick Check update – Spring 2024

Thanks to everyone who sent ticks to us in 2023. We received over 100 samples! Please send us more ticks! We are still working on getting the ticks tested for pathogens but that should be completed shortly.

Here’s what we have learned so far:

• The brown dog tick is the most common tick found throughout the state.140 brown dog ticks were collected on dogs, one on a human. This tick can carry Rocky Mountain spotted fever as well as other tick fevers.
• Rocky Mountain wood ticks (Dermacentor andersoni) were collected on humans in Gila and Pima counties. This tick can carry Rocky Mountain spotted fever as well as Colorado tick fever.
• Western blacklegged ticks (Ixodes pacificus) were collected from dogs, humans and vegetation in high elevation site in Mojave County. This tick can carry Lyme disease.
• Gulf Coast ticks (Amblyomma nr. maculatum) were collected from dogs and vegetation in Cochise and Santa Cruz counties. This tick can carry Rickettsia parkeri, a similar disease to Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Other interesting and weird findings:

Traveling ticks

• Several deer ticks (Ixodes scapularis), the main vector of Lyme disease, traveled on people from the East Coast to Arizona.
• A lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum) traveled on a human from New Jersey, up the Grand Canyon and home again!