An Asian, self-cloning tick threatens U.S. livestock

Author: Leah Rosenbaum / Source: Science News for Students

Tadhgh Rainey has seen plenty of bloodsuckers. He’s an entomologist — a scientist who studies insects — at the Hunterdon County Health Services in Flemington, N.

J. He knows all about mosquitoes and ticks. But he had never seen anything like the September 2017 infestation on a pet sheep.

As he and a colleague entered the sheep’s enclosure, “We almost immediately got covered in ticks,” he says. “I couldn’t believe this sheep was alive.” It was covered in hundreds — maybe thousands — of the ticks. (By the way, ticks are arachnids, not insects.)

Rainey couldn’t identify the species. So he sent samples to labs across the United States. One went to Andrea Egizi. She’s an entomologist at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in New Brunswick, N.J. When she analyzed its DNA, she was shocked to learn it was a native of East Asia.

This bush or longhorned tick has a long name too: Haemaphysalis longicornis (HEE-muh-fih-SAAL-is Lon-jih-KOR-nis). It can be found all over Japan, China and the Korean Peninsula. That unlucky New Jersey sheep was the first reported sighting of the tick in the continental United States, say Rainey and Egizi. They described their finding online February 19 in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

It’s rare to find a new immigrant tick species in the wild, scientists say. And this one seems to be spreading. It has so far also turned up in Virginia, West Virginia and Arkansas.

People in Maryland are now on the lookout.

Here are five reasons why scientists are keeping an eye out for this sneaky invader.

1. This tick can clone itself.

After a female longhorned tick eats, she can lay up to 2,000 eggs. All have the exact same DNA as their mom. Two to three months later, the eggs hatch without any male fertilization. They grow into exact mini copies of their mom.

This rare way of reproducing without the genetic influence of a male is called parthenogenesis (Par-then-oh-JEN-eh-sis). Of the world’s more than 800 tick species, fewer than 20 appear able to reproduce this way.

Neeta Connally is a medical entomologist at West Connecticut…

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