Although winter has barely released its grip, so have the ticks started to wake up to life. When it gets warm, they come up out of the ground, where they would otherwise is in hibernation, and sit and wait for someone to come walking. On a south-facing slope where the sun is at, they can be brought up earlier if there is a warmer microclimate.
– Ticks have no calendar, no go on the temperature. They say that it will be around five degrees in order to become active. If the weather becomes too cold or too dry, they are looking down under the ground again, ” says Lars Lundqvist, a biologist and expert on ticks at Lund university.
looking out into the countryside more in the spring increases the risk of being affected by the diseases as part of the transfer. The biggest risk is to get lyme disease, TBE, is still a relatively rare disease but the tick-borne virus has increased steadily during the 2000s, affecting around 300 people each year, according to Folkhälsomyndigheten.
Read more: Record number of cases of TBE last year
in Order to get a high level of protection against serious disease, one must get vaccinated. It required three doses, and it is good to take the first syringe early in the year. Usually start TBE season in april and can last until december.
– If you are sensitive and don’t want to get sick and spend a lot of time in the outdoors can be reason to get vaccinated, ” says Lars Lundqvist.
Against lyme disease is no vaccine, but which dealt with the infected with antibiotics.
the whole of Sweden, but ticks carrying the TBE virus is most prevalent in Stockholm, Södermanland, Uppsala and Västra Götaland counties.
A tick can be several years old, some females can become 5-6 years, and the survival rate depends on how the climate has been several years back. A single mild winter will not increase the number of ticks, ” explains Lars Lundqvist.
– There are all the time a capital of ticks that can be active. The number is depending on whether they received food and where it has been just the right circumstances for a long time. Those who we perceive as a mild winter, when it is around zero, is the most difficult for ticks for then it can form crystals inside the body and it is deadly for them.
– However, they can withstand low temperatures if it is so for a long period of time, and especially if there is too much snow for when the temperature is steady in the snow and then the calmer conditions in the ground, ” says Lars Lundqvist.
Ticks go on all animals and can survive for up to one year without sucking blood. The deer are helping to spread them across the country, which, in turn, increases the risk of lyme disease and TBE is spreading to new areas. To keep rådjursstammen down there would prevent some of the spreading, consider Lundqvist.
” the Deer, everything becomes cooler, they come closer to humans and are found in residential gardens, where they drop their ticks. Then they will enter in the cities and therefore meet more people on the ticks.
in addition, the ticks get more and more difficult to reproduce.
– the Tick needs three meals in life. They eat as larva, nymph and as an adult, and then, if there are a lot of roe deer, which is their main source of food, they can lay eggs and multiply, ” says Lundqvist.
in Addition to the ticks also have ants, bumble bees and the earliest butterflies started to wake up to the life of the rising temperature.
