Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

Publication Title

Subtropical Agriculture and Environments

Volume

74

Pages

13-20

Abstract

Standard off-host tick census techniques are generally inefficient for larval stages. Also, such techniques expose the investigator to environmental hazards including tick bites. Mechanical devices are an option which were tested under field conditions for proof of concept and in side-by-side comparison to the standard techniques. The tick-vac collected more ticks than the legging technique, but with lower frequency of positive detections. It may have utility for sampling small areas, such as weedy corrals suspected of harboring ticks. Different configurations of tick-bots, robotic vehicles with flags, depended on intensive operator control to avoid obstacles, limiting operation to line of sight. The use of a robot to disrupt clusters of questing larvae was not successful under the conditions of the trial.

Comments

Publisher landing page: https://www.subplantsci.org/v74-2023/

Rights

© 2023 Subtropical Agriculture and Environments. All rights reserved.

Included with the kind written permission of the copyright holder.

Original Publication Citation

Thomas, D. B., Gaff, H. D., & Leal-Galvan, B. (2023). Mechanical devices for census and detection of off-host larval ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) with emphasis on the cattle fever tick. Subtropical Agriculture and Environments 74, 13-20. http://www.subplantsci.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Thomas-et-al.-Revised-2023.pdf

ORCID

0000-0002-4034-2684 (Gaff)

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