TICK VECTORS (For more information about ticks click here)
These tick photos may help you to identify the different species of ticks and what they look like at various life stages. Some tick photos include objects to help you compare their size to the actual size of the ticks.
There are a number of ticks in the United States that can carry and/or transmit many diseases which people and their pets may get from a tickbite. Often, one tickbite can transmit several different diseases. The ticks most often talked about are the Ixodes scapularis, commonly known as the deer tick or blacklegged tick, and its western cousin, Ixodes pacificus, the western blacklegged tick. Both of these ticks transmit Lyme disease.
Information below is from LDA’s LymeR Primer – Available for online ordering
LDA’s Spanish LymeR Primer – Available for Downloading
Latin Name (Common Name): Diseases they can transmit
Click photos for more descriptions
Ixodes scapularis
(deer tick or black legged tick)
Found in Northeast & Upper Midwest
Lyme (B. burgdorferi, B. mayonii), Borrelia miyamotoi, babesiosis, anaplasmosis, Powassan encephalitis, tick paralysis, bartonellosis, ehrlichiosis (due to Ehrlichia muris-like).
Ixodes scapularis have been shown to carry Ehrlichiosis (HME), but to date, transmission is still in question