On a blisteringly hot, sunny day this summer, Emory University researcher Arabella Lewis made her way through the underbrush in a patch of woods in Putnam County, Georgia, about an hour southeast of Atlanta. She was after something most people try desperately to avoid while in the woods: ticks. “Sometimes you gotta get back in the weeds to get the best ticks,” she explained, sweeping a large square of white flannel along the forest floor. The idea was that the ticks could sense the movement of the fabric and smell the carbon dioxide Lewis breathed out and would grab onto the flannel flag. “My favorite thing about them is their little grabby front arms, the way that they like wave them around, like they’re trying to grab onto things,” said Lewis, who’s been fascinated by ticks since she was a young kid growing up on a farm - and persistently dealing with ticks. “They have these little organs on their hands that smell, so they smell with their hands.” Grist thanks its sponsors. Become one. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. Here's How Once a tick jumped aboard her flannel, Lewis picked it up with the tweezers she wore around her neck and deposited it into a labeled vial. Back at the Emory lab, she would test ticks for the Heartland virus. The tick collection and testing is part of an ongoing effort to get a better handle on Georgia’s tick population and the diseases the ticks carry. Earlier this year, Emory scientists published detailed, localized maps of where the state’s most common ticks are likely to show up. Now, they’re tracking emerging diseases like Heartland, a still-rare virus that causes symptoms like fever, fatigue, nausea and diarrhea. Nationwide, vector-borne diseases - that is, illnesses spread by carriers like ticks and mosquitoes - are on the rise, according to the CDC, and climate change is a major... |