UI scientists lead tick research effort

An interdisciplinary team of researchers led by University of Idaho scientists has been awarded nearly $6 million to improve and collate data surrounding the distribution and movement of tick populations and tick-borne diseases in the Western U.S.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, instances of tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever have more than doubled between 2004 and 2016. In 2014, ticks were responsible for 94 percent of vector-borne diseases, according to the CDC. The majority of cases in the U.S. are found in the eastern part of the country, but researchers say these populations appear to be drifting west — and bringing disease with them.

“That becomes an increasing problem for people that may come in contact with ticks directly or through livestock or wildlife,” said Lucas Sheneman, director of the UI’s data management organization the Northwest Knowledge Network, “So we’re trying to understand that dynamic in the western U.S. a bit better so that we can help prevent and control and better understand ticks and how they might spread diseases to humans and the animals we depend on.”

UI assistant professor and research lead Xiaogang “Marshall” Ma said the four-year project will include collaboration with researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

Ma said the project will seek to collate and centralize data addressing ticks and tick-borne disease in the west under a single framework, identify patterns in tick population movement and behavior and develop models to help describe and predict this behavior.

Sheneman said there is robust data on ticks and tick-borne illness in the Eastern U.S., where Lyme disease is prevalent, but data in the west is much more sparse. He said what little data there is is usually isolated from parallel research. He said a large part of the Knowledge Network’s role in the program will be to help organize and integrate existing data under a single framework so they can communicate with one another and help track movement of tick-borne disease across the U.S. more effectively.

Sheneman said they will also help to connect tick data with other, measurable environmental factors like climate change that likely play a role in tick behavior and the expansion of tick habitat.

Ma said a large chunk of funding for the project will go toward the development of tools for education outreach, some of which will go to the UI’s experimental video game studio Polymorphic Games.

“We’re essentially going to make digital products — animations, video games and things like that — that can kind of help amplify outreach activities of the project, and help scientists kind of visualize and communicate their work,” said Barrie Robison, UI professor and director of the school’s Institute for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies, noting the studio has done similar work with other scientists for the past five years. “We’re getting reasonably good at converting the work that somebody like Marshall does, for example, into a form that middle school kids can understand or high school teachers can understand or even just the lay public.”

Robison said such tools are not a “magic bullet” but can be one effective way to help educate some on the realities and risks related to tick-borne disease.

Ma said it is necessary for this kind of research to be collaborative. For his part, he noted he is a computer scientist, not a tick expert. For example, he said data scientists bring valuable experience in collating data and developing algorithms — which can be incredibly helpful in navigating and centralizing multiple sets of data. However, he said it still requires the critical eye of scientists from multiple disciplines to help interpret these results.

“When it’s more complicated, it’s not only the collaboration between two disciplines to get the really interesting patterns or some good discoveries,” Ma said. “We need a collaboration of researchers from different disciplines to see, for example, is there a relationship between climate or temperature and the population of ticks? Is there a relationship between the wildfire and the population of ticks?”

According to a UI press release, NSF funding for the project totals $5,830,709. Some of the money will be used to hire a postdoctoral researcher, two research assistants and several undergraduate interns, the release said.

Scott Jackson can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to sjackson@dnews.com.