In the News

With the weather getting warmer, tick season is ramping up and experts are saying to not take the threat lightly.

Charles Lubelczyk will focus his talk on drivers (ecological/human-mediated) of the expansion of ticks, tying in climate, landscape ecology, policy, and human-caused introductions.

I recently delivered to Tufts University’s world-renowned infectious disease authority, Dr. Sam Telford III, all of the ticks that our bird-0banding team removed from migratory songbirds mist-netted at our Auburn Sportsman’s Club Research Station this past spring.

Scientific dedication runs through the Telford family. Dr. Sam Telford’s wife, Heidi, whom he met while doing graduate work at Harvard, now also researches infectious diseases at Grafton’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University with her nationally-renowned spouse.

As the threat of Lyme disease grows and fears surrounding it spread faster than the ticks that carry the infection, researchers are developing two vaccine or vaccine-like approaches to prevent this increasingly problematic disease. But don’t expect to get one soon. They are at least three to five years away from clinical use, according to their developers.