Black-legged ticks are the primary spreaders of Lyme disease in humans. But in Michigan and other U.S. states, it’s whitetail deer — and not people — that serve as the ticks’ primary hosts. Which is why some researchers combatting Lyme disease in the Wolverine State are now feeding deer treats to suburban whitetails.
Under a new pilot project led by Michigan State University, researchers are experimenting with new ways to give anti-tick medication to whitetails. The underlying goal with the project is to see if they can reduce the number of viable hosts for black-legged ticks, which would theoretically decrease the overall number of ticks, and therefore reduce their ability to spread disease.
As MSU points out in a recent article about the research project, wildlife managers in other states have had some success controlling ticks by culling or removing whitetail deer and other wild cervids. Recent moves in Maine to increase the number of moose tags in areas with tick infestations is a prime example.
This kind of management doesn’t work as well in places like southern Michigan, however, where deer herds are overpopulated in many farms and neighborhoods. As the lower peninsula gets more developed, bringing even more deer into the growing suburbs, it becomes increasingly challenging to keep those herds at appropriate levels. So, instead of removing deer, MSU researchers are trying to treat the deer that live near human populations.
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“Previously, hiking and recreation in forested areas where the tick had become established was a big cause of infections in Michigan,” says lead researcher Dr. Jean Tsao. “But, as the tick has spread in Michigan, many cases can occur just in suburban and exurban neighborhoods because we’ve created a landscape that’s great for white-tailed deer.”
At this point in the study, the research team is dropping untreated deer treat capsules (the technical term is “drug delivery units”) in public parks all across Meridian township. These capsules are filled with things deer like to eat, like molasses, alfalfa, and corn, along with a biomarker, which allows researchers to tell which deer are consuming the treats. They’re also using trail cameras to track this.
If the researchers find that deer are actually eating the treats, the next step for researchers would be to add some kind of anti-tick medication to the treats. This would either be an acaricide — a pesticide that kills ticks and mites, and is found in many pet flea collars and tick medications — or a vaccine that would make the deer more resistant to Lyme disease over time.
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