Vials containing larva, nymph and adult ixodes scapularis, commonly known as blacklegged ticks, photographed at UAA researcher Micah Hahn’s Anchorage office on Wednesday.
Hahn said the findings showed that right now, the threat ticks in Alaska pose to humans and domestic pets appears to be relatively low. But that could change, and researchers continue to worry about the possibility of ticks that are carrying Lyme and other diseases hitching a ride on pets arriving in the state from Outside, and infecting wildlife here.
The likelihood of more ticks and tick-borne diseases becoming established in Alaska has increased as winter temperatures have become milder in recent years, creating a climate more hospitable to ticks, Hahn said. Southcentral and Southeast Alaska are “pretty hospitable now, and these areas of hospitability will expand with climate change,” she said.Micah Hahn, a UAA researcher and author of a new report on ticks, photographed in her Anchorage office on Wednesday.
Scientists also visited nine recreation sites in Anchorage, Soldotna, Homer, Kenai and Anchor Point in the summers of 2019 and 2020 to see what ticks they could find there, and trapped small mammals in the area to test them for tick-borne illnesses.As part of those efforts, a total of more than 2,000 ticks were tracked in Alaska between 2010 and 2022. About half were found on domestic animals, and most were discovered during the summer months. The vast majority were native tick species.
So far, there have been no detections of the winter tick in Alaska, but Beckmen said she’s “very concerned” that it could make its way to the state soon given recent detections in the Whitehorse area.