FermanMonteRae

Alarm has risen in recent years as warming temperatures intensify tick activity and disease risk. Cases of malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus and Lyme disease — infections transmitted by ticks and mosquitoes — have skyrocketed. Scientists worry that Rocky Mountain spotted fever, first identified in western Montana at the beginning of the 20th century, could spread to more regions.

“What’s the tipping point? We don’t know for sure,” said Laura Backus, a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Infectious Disease Ecology at the University of California at Davis and another member of the research team. “Weather directly affects how fast ticks reproduce. When it’s hot and dry, they get more desperate.”

The brown dog tick, one of the species that transmits Rocky Mountain spotted fever, becomes more aggressive toward humans in seeking blood meals in hotter, drier climates, such as that in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, said Backus, who led a 2021 study that found that the ticks are twice as likely to choose humans over dogs when temperatures rise.

You know we’re going to make this world uninhabitable for humans

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2023/tick-diseases-rocky-mountain-spotted-fever/

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