The first stop of the day was Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park. The park consists of miles of trails for both cyclists and horseback riders. It also had good 'tick territory' or general appropriate habitat for the affinis and Gulf Coast ticks we were hunting for.
Grassy areas are where our suspects Amblyomma maculatum are typically found at our other sites. So to see if we can find populations of them within this county we had to find similar habitat to look for them here. Although we didn't find any Macs, we did find lone stars and dog ticks. We were also quickly reminded that larval season is upon us. As we left the field we bonded quite a bit as a team removing larvae off each other. After walking through the tall grass, one can only imagine where we found larvae crawling.
With all the rain earlier in the week we were worried if we'd be able to complete the state sweep this week. But after a few rain storms, we ended up with a beautiful day to flag for ticks.
Grassy Area
Just over a small stream we found the perfect site to look for our Ixodes species, or blacklegged ticks. With the water body close by, and small ground cover with an abundance of leaf litter we thought this would be perfect 'tick territory' for Ixodes affinis.
Water Area, it was fun to wade through the water and see all the life around it, including some pretty snazzy fish.
In our second county of the day we stopped at Merrimac Farm Wildlife Management Area. I particularly loved this field site. Last semester I completed a course in Wildlife Ecology and Management, and this site encompassed much of that course. This wildlife management area consists of 302 acres with various habitat types including contiguous wetlands, hardwood forests, and upland meadows. Diversity of this site was really intriguing and appealed to my Wildlife Biologist mentality and ideals.
Trail: wooded leafy area
Path down to the pond complete with grasses to flag along the way
The last stop of the day was at Curtis Memorial Park.
We chose to flag here at the Cedar Path Trail, following the green path
Glimpse at the foliage present
Lizard!
We tried to Check him for ticks too but he ran away to catch dinner within the tree covered in ants
We tried to Check him for ticks too but he ran away to catch dinner within the tree covered in ants
Mystery plant: reproductive organs looked interesting, along with the symmetry of the leaf. I will have to get out my Field Guide from Systematic Botany and identify its species
After consulting my colleague, David, another RUMS student, the mystery tree has been identified as a
tulip poplar.
Liriodendron Tulipifera
Due to the flowers that look like tulips
photo credit: http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/IMAGES/Kentucky/Tulip-poplar-leaves-flower.jpg
Last but not least, on the way to the field sites we keep an eye out for fresh roadkill. We have a roadkill permit and a standard operating procedure when we come across roadkill, so that we can remove any ticks found on it and take a tissue sample to test for diseases. Today we found a raccoon.
Ticks are usually found in hard to groom places. We check the orbits (arm pits!)
And...the ears and face
And sometimes we even find a tick or two. Here you can see an attached dog tick in between the tweezers
YAY TICKS!
-Lexi
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