(2012) reported that only 60% of the predicted tick high-risk areas yielded ticks upon field sampling. Active surveillance, collecting ticks on a cloth dragged through potential tick habitat, is widely recognized to suffer from being a low-sensitivity method of tick detection. While these risk models aim to predict areas where tick populations may establish, with the attendant evaluated risk of tick-vectored diseases, these models all require field validation, most frequently by active surveillance. In addition, case reports from humans, environmental factors such as climate, biogeography, distribution of the wildlife species needed to sustain tick and Borrelia populations, and canine Lyme seropositivity studies have been used to predict the risk of Lyme borreliosis. These maps and models draw, in various measures, upon passive tick surveillance-ticks collected on companion animals and humans-or field collection of ticks, also known as active surveillance or tick dragging.

The survival of these ticks in either transient or small local populations, only some of which may proliferate into large, established “endemic” tick populations, is difficult to detect, yet important, as even small and transient populations pose a health risk to those living in those areas.Īs ticks are expanding their range, the risk to public health has mobilized considerable resources to generate Lyme borreliosis risk maps and models. However, the prediction of new areas of population expansion is challenging because of the constant seeding of adventitious ticks introduced by migratory birds and mammals. Tick populations are expanding their range in response to climate change in North America, and this has brought them to Canada. In Europe, the Ixodes ricinus species group is the primary vector. In North America, Ixodes scapularis is the primary vector in the eastern and central parts of the continent, and Ixodes pacificus is prevalent in in the western regions, although Ixodes cookei, Ixodes angustus, and Ixodes muris have also been found to be vectors, and other species are potential vectors. Most importantly, partnership between community members and researchers has proven a powerful tool in educating communities about of the risk of tick-vectored diseases and in encouraging tick bite prevention. Although deviations from standard surveillance protocols and the choice of tick surveillance sites makes the incorporation of community-generated data into conventional surveillance analyses more complex, this citizen science data remains useful in providing high-density longitudinal tick surveillance of a small area in which detailed ecological observations can be made. Four community members persisted with tick collections over several years, collectively recovering several hundred ticks. In 2014, the same region was monitored by academic researchers, public health workers, and citizen scientists, allowing a comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of each type of surveillance effort. Citizen science initiatives are ideally suited to address this logistical problem and generate high-density and complex data from sites of community importance. This process is labor- and time-intensive, limiting the number of sites monitored and the frequency of monitoring. Active surveillance involves teams of researchers collecting ticks from field locations with the potential to be sites of establishing tick populations. Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in North America and Europe, and on-going surveillance is required to monitor the spread of the tick vectors as their populations expand under the influence of climate change.

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