MDI Science Café — Tick Talk: Understanding the Socio-Ecological Drivers of the Emergence of Lyme Disease in Maine

Description

The topic of the MDI Science Café for Monday, October 19, 2020 will be “Tick Talk: Understanding the Socio-Ecological Drivers of the Emergence of Lyme Disease in Maine,” presented by Allison Gardner, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor in the School of Biology and Ecology at University of Maine, Orono. The blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis) first appeared in Maine during the 1980s, and its geographic range expansion has been associated with a concomitant increase in the prevalence of tick-borne pathogens throughout the state. Maine has experienced a five-fold increase in incidence of Lyme disease in humans over the past decade, and multiple emerging tick-borne diseases also are on the rise, including human babesiosis, human granulocytic anaplasmosis, and Powassan virus. This talk will explore the ecological and social drivers of the spread of the blacklegged tick and the pathogens it transmits, drawing upon ongoing, collaborative research at the University of Maine, and discuss management strategies to inhibit tick-borne disease transmission among wildlife and humans. Dr. Allison Gardner is a medical entomologist. Her research focuses on the ecology of infectious diseases of humans and wildlife that are transmitted by arthropod vectors, such as mosquitoes or ticks. Dr. Gardner’s current projects include studying the invasion of the blacklegged tick and Lyme disease in Maine, investigating the ecology of a mosquito vector for Zika virus in the Caribbean, and understanding the interactions between risk of exposure to vector-borne disease and economic interests (e.g., timber harvesting, tourism) at local and international spatial scales. She completed her Ph.D. in Entomology, M.S. in Statistics, and M.S. in Veterinary Pathobiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Currently, Dr. Gardner is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biology and Ecology and a cooperating faculty member in the Ecology and Environmental Sciences program, the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, and the Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering at the University of Maine.