We brought ticks home with us!
Congratulations; you can now help us test our new procedure on how to share observations of ticks brought back home after exploring outdoors.
One of the first steps is to find your camera and a small jar or vial and a good set of tweezers.
If the tick is attached/embedded, you have time to take a few photos. Do your best to not shake as you are taking the photo – it is important to have the critter in focus.
Next follow instructions to remove the tick; there is a lot of info online. Just remember to keep your cool and to gently detach the tick.
Once the tick has been detached/captured follow the eTick video tutorial instructions and put the tick briefly in the freezer so its movements are slowed down. This will make it easier to take good photos.
Once you have your series of photos (both dorsal and ventral) it is time to upload them to iNaturalist and test our new procedure which includes recommendations on how to populate various fields.
To be considered a research grade observation, iNat photos must be associated with a species name, a date/time, and a location.
Scientific Name: If you recognize the type of tick, then select the species from the list of suggested names. If not, simply start typing tick and then select ‘ticks (Ixodida)’.
Latitude/Longitude/Accuracy/PlaceName: you must provide location information. This is a bit more complicated and below we list a number of options:
•If you know exactly where you picked up the tick, then enter this location.
•If you don’t know where you picked up the tick, but you explored one general area, then enter this location but assign a large accuracy value; this will place a wide circle around the general location.
•Enter your home location if:
o you stopped and explored many areas before returning. Consider including your general route in the description/notes box. ‘Tick found at home after a day hiking several trails on the south shore’ or ‘Tick found at home after camping for several days at national park’.
o you didn’t find the tick for several hours/days.
o you suspect that a tick was brought to your home through some other pathway such as a visiting dog.
When assigning your home location, you do have the option to obscure the location. Click here to read more about what it means when an observation’s location is obscured.
Assigning your home location means that the location where the tick was originally picked up is unknown. You did, however, transport the tick to this location, so in one sense this location is valid.
To flag the fact that this is not the original location, please add the following iNaturalist observation field ‘pathway’. Possible entries for ‘pathway’ include ‘transported by human’, ‘transported by animal’, ‘unknown’.
Review the notes/description and add any missing information, and add/populate observation fields as described in previous post
Press ‘SUBMIT’!
Your observation is now available publicly and is accessible to researchers. If you wish to immediately contribute your observation to the eTick research project, then follow the steps below. This task is recommended but optional.
Go to eTick.ca and click [SUBMIT TICKS].
Decide if you wish to sign in as a guest or to set up an account.
Go through the 5 steps:
- select your province;
- upload image(s);
- enter location information and if relevant flag the location as your home address;
- enter the date when the tick was observed;
- provide information on host type to indicate if you saw the tick in its environment or on a human or on an animal.
NOTE: if you select ‘on human’ or ‘on an animal’ there will be a series of additional questions which will remain private in the eTick database
•sex (on human)
•age category (on human)
•was the tick attached to the host when discovered? (on human/on animal)
•Has the host traveled more than 50 km from its host in the past 2 weeks? (on human/on animal)
•Are you willing to also have your record appear on Pet Tick Tracker? (on animal)
Once all questions have been answered an eTick identifier will be immediately assigned.
The next step is for the information and photo to be vetted by eTick. Once this is completed you will receive an email similar to the ones below:
•Your submission ET-13619 has been identified (votre soumission ET-13619 a été identifiée).
•The tick images you have recently submitted to eTick.ca are of low quality and cannot be used to identify the tick you have found.
If the observation passes the vetting process, then the next step is to return to the iNat observation. As the owner of your observation, you are able to edit the observation. Recommend the addition of a phrase similar to the following to the notes/description box: ‘tick photo and observation details shared with and vetted by eTick.ca (ETID-#####)’
Next in the Observation Fields section add the following field: AssociatedMedia. Enter the eTick URL. Example: https://www.etick.ca/etickapp/en/ticks/public/view/13619
Reread the previous journal post in this project re additional observation fields that should be added/populated.
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