BANGOR DAILY NEWS • March 22, 2021
Under snow and ice, disease-ridden ticks wait out the winter in Maine. Come spring, they emerge to roam the landscape, searching for their next host. Sixteen species of ticks have been identified in Maine, but it’s the deer tick — also known as the black-legged tick — that’s a real danger to people in early spring. “The deer ticks tend to emerge the earliest,” said Griffin Dill, who manages the Tick Lab, located in the new University of Maine Cooperative Extension Diagnostic and Research Laboratory in Orono. “Then, once we hit the end of May and June, it starts to become sort of a free-for-all and other tick species are becoming active as well.” Once a deer tick finds a host, it could transmit a variety of serious diseases including Lyme, anaplasmosis and babesiosis.