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Relapsing Fever Tick

Relapsing Fever Tick:

General Description

  • The adult soft tick has eight legs, rounded body, dimples on their body, and mouthparts hidden from view when seen from above.

 

 

Life Cycle and Common Characteristics

  • Female ticks lay eggs in batches, with each batch of eggs produced after taking a blood meal.
  • A female may lay from 25 to several hundred eggs during her lifetime.
  • Relapsing fever ticks go through four developmental stages: eggs, larvae, nymphs and adults.
  • They feed for only about 15-30 minutes and then leave the host

Credit: Gary Hettrick RML, NIAID – CDC

 

Damage and Medical Implications

  • Infected soft ticks in the genus Ornithodoros and Carios transmit tick-borne relapsing fever.
  • It is a bacterial infection with symptoms that include repeated episodes of fever, headache, muscle, bleeding, stiff neck, joint aches, nausea and vomiting, weakness, and coma. These symptoms usually continue for 2 to 9 days, then disappear
  • The ticks typically prefer to feed on hosts in their nests or burrows.
  • The ticks seldom come into contact with people. They emerge at night and feed briefly while the person is sleeping and the bites are painless.
  • Infected people develop sickness between 5 and 15 days after they are bitten.