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Speaker 3: Oh hey, sold uncle Dad, who's not too proud to
Speaker 3: shove a finger in each of his ears.
Speaker 4: When a fire truck goes by. It's too loud.
Speaker 3: Ali ward back with another episode of Ologies.
Speaker 4: All right, diseases.
Speaker 3: Nobody likes them, not even vectors probably, But isn't it
Speaker 3: nice to be united in a common dislike of them?
Speaker 3: So let's clamber down into a big, juicy vat of
Speaker 3: tickborn illness, shall we? So recovered Acarology a few weeks ago,
Speaker 3: and I promise that I would hustle to get you
Speaker 3: a follow up on tick spit souvenirs that they can
Speaker 3: give you. And this week is the week. Did you
Speaker 3: come out of acroology liking ticks just a little bit?
Speaker 3: Because I didn't. I still hate them very deeply, and
Speaker 3: they've silently crawled to the very very tippy top my
Speaker 3: shit list. So let's talk about what they can do
Speaker 3: to us. But first let me talk about you and
Speaker 3: just how much I like you. So thanks to everyone
Speaker 3: who is supporting the show via Patreon. I could not
Speaker 3: make Ologies without you, And thank you to everyone getting ologies,
Speaker 3: merch at ologiesmerch dot com. Also, I put out some
Speaker 3: social media posts this week that if you got merch
Speaker 3: in the last few weeks and it seems oddly late,
Speaker 3: if you didn't hear the secrets at the end of
Speaker 3: the last few episodes, I had my wallets stolen in
Speaker 3: a walmart last month. All of my cards were canceled,
Speaker 3: so there was a delay with the merch site. Anyway,
Speaker 3: everything is fine out there's still a couple ordershipping out.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry if yours was late. I care so
Speaker 3: much and I'm so sorry. Thank you also to everyone
Speaker 3: who is subscribing and rating, most of all reviewing the
Speaker 3: podcast so that I can lurk and read your nice
Speaker 3: words and I just pick a fresh fun one each week,
Speaker 3: such as this one by Maria, who says ology since
Speaker 3: taught me to look at trees and watch what answer
Speaker 3: up to I spend so much of my time appreciating
Speaker 3: the smallest of things, which add up to several hours
Speaker 3: of my week being filled with both peace and excitement. Anyway,
Speaker 3: let's get the hell right into this so disease ecology. Ecology,
Speaker 3: as we know from the last three episodes, means dwelling
Speaker 3: that's the root of it or where something lives.
Speaker 4: Now. Disease is all French for.
Speaker 3: A lack of ease, so simple disease. So a disease
Speaker 3: ecologist is like, okay, shit, that bums us out.
Speaker 4: Where are you? Where are you living now?
Speaker 3: This is a great companion episode to the acarology on
Speaker 3: all about ticks, how ticks work, what they want from us,
Speaker 3: how stabby are their mouths? How do you get them
Speaker 3: out of you? So if you'd like to not get
Speaker 3: a tick born illness, start there for prevention.
Speaker 4: That is the base.
Speaker 3: That's the one oh one amazing episode with doctor Nita
Speaker 3: Pardonani Connolly who has a lab in Connecticut.
Speaker 4: They know a little aboutics. Okay.
Speaker 3: Also two quick corrections before you douse yourself or your
Speaker 3: life with permetherns, don't use this stuff directly on the
Speaker 3: skin unless it's been prescribed by doc. Also, check with
Speaker 3: a vet because liquid permetherne can be toxic to kitties,
Speaker 3: so ask first about that. Now, if you're like is
Speaker 3: permethrin the name of a dragon and a fantasy franchise,
Speaker 3: no again, listen to Acroology. You'll get it.
Speaker 4: Okay. So this disease ecologist is one of the best.
Speaker 3: She studies the whereabouts and effects of baddies like lime
Speaker 3: disease and babiosis and other things that like to live
Speaker 3: in your body without permission. So she's an assistant professor
Speaker 3: at San Francisco State University. She is a research scientist
Speaker 3: for the Bay Area Lime Disease Foundation and a member
Speaker 3: of the California Department of Public Health TICK Working Group.
Speaker 3: She runs her own lab at SFSU dedicated to research
Speaker 3: on these very topics. And she hopped in a sound
Speaker 3: booth at eight two six Valencia in San Francisco, and
Speaker 3: we chatted about how many times she's been tick bit,
Speaker 3: what to do if you find one that's been on you,
Speaker 3: how animal populations carry lime and other diseases, why possums
Speaker 3: and western fence lizards are our friends, and what scares her.
Speaker 4: The most about ticks.
Speaker 3: So button up your cosmic lab coats and take a
Speaker 3: micro gander at disease ecologist doctor Andrea's way. And so
Speaker 3: tell me what you study, Tell me what your work entails.
Speaker 3: This is so exciting.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So my work is really, if I were to summarize it,
Speaker 6: it's trying to understand diseases and how they're transmitted and
Speaker 6: how ecological factors, environment and vertebrate can unities sort of
Speaker 6: natural communities might influence how they're transmitted and where they are.
Speaker 6: And many of the diseases that I work on happen
Speaker 6: to be zoonautic, so that means that they're pathogens that
Speaker 6: are naturally sort of maintained in wildlife and in wild
Speaker 6: situations and can also cross over to humans and cause
Speaker 6: disease in humans. And so zoonotic diseases are a huge
Speaker 6: part of, you know, the burden of infectious diseases that
Speaker 6: we see in the world, and many of the diseases
Speaker 6: that we're facing that are that seem to be new
Speaker 6: or seem to be emerging actually come from wildlife reservoirs.
Speaker 3: A lot of the diseases that we're seeing that are
Speaker 3: tick born, those have existed in populations, in animals and
Speaker 3: wildlife well before.
Speaker 6: That's right, Yeah, I mean nothing is really new in
Speaker 6: the sense of you know, spontaneously generating. We're starting to
Speaker 6: see some of those with antibiotic resistance and sort of
Speaker 6: new genetic strains, but many of the pathogens that we
Speaker 6: talk about as being new are they're really just new
Speaker 6: to us or in terms of causing harm in human populations.
Speaker 3: Now, tell me a little bit about when you decided
Speaker 3: to be a biologist, or when you were like, this
Speaker 3: is my deal, this is what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, I've been sort of reflecting on that
Speaker 6: a little bit recently after listening to a few of
Speaker 6: your shows. And I think it happened pretty early on.
Speaker 6: I've always really been interested in science. I remember getting
Speaker 6: my first microscope when I was eleven or so, and
Speaker 6: I wanted to put everything under the microscope, and I
Speaker 6: totally got shamed once because someone caught me putting a
Speaker 6: scab under the microscope. I really wanted to see what
Speaker 6: that scab looked like. And you know, then after that,
Speaker 6: I started doing it more in secret with the things
Speaker 6: I looked at under the microscope. And it wasn't until
Speaker 6: I got to college that I took a class and
Speaker 6: I realized that I really was interested in understanding animal
Speaker 6: populations and how understanding their populations has all of this
Speaker 6: relevance or human well being and you know, are sort
Speaker 6: of way of life. And so I began to be
Speaker 6: interested in field ecology, and so I started taking classes
Speaker 6: that took me into the field all over the place,
Speaker 6: and I started learning how to do things like trap mammals.
Speaker 5: And that was.
Speaker 6: Really, I think maybe the moment when I realized that
Speaker 6: this is really cool. You know, I could go out
Speaker 6: there and set out a little trap, bait it with
Speaker 6: oats and peanut butter, and then come back the next
Speaker 6: morning and they would be like a little surprise present inside,
Speaker 6: and you know, you didn't know what it was until
Speaker 6: you opened it up.
Speaker 5: Hi, fancy meeting you here.
Speaker 6: And so I'd got a lot of experience working with
Speaker 6: small mammal population genetics, and because I knew how to
Speaker 6: trap small mammals, I somehow learned about a field assistant
Speaker 6: position in upstate New York on a lime disease project,
Speaker 6: and so that's how I got into studying lime disease.
Speaker 6: So I really got into it for the cute, fuzzy mammals,
Speaker 6: and then I stayed for the tick boorne diseases.
Speaker 3: That's a common marketing ploy, you know, Yeah, stay for
Speaker 3: the disease. So Andrea got her bachelor's and PhD in
Speaker 3: integrative biology at UC Berkeley, and her doctoral dissertation was
Speaker 3: on the ecology of lime disease. But I just had
Speaker 3: a lingering question. I have a question, did you ever
Speaker 3: eat any of the oats and peanut butter balls because
Speaker 3: it sounds really good, you.
Speaker 5: Know, I never did, even though it smelled good.
Speaker 6: You know, we mix it in these big vats, you know,
Speaker 6: and it's just not appetizing.
Speaker 5: Although, yeah, although you know, my.
Speaker 6: Students do make jokes about how, you know, as starving
Speaker 6: grad students, they can dip into it if they really
Speaker 6: needed to.
Speaker 3: Sounds good, sounds a cookie, though, But I guess in
Speaker 3: a five gallon home depot bucket mixed with like a stick,
Speaker 3: it's a little different.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: It's more it's you know, it's really about setting the
Speaker 6: mood for eating.
Speaker 5: And yeah, it's not it. I'm really not very.
Speaker 3: And so you were working in upstate New York, And
Speaker 3: now how long ago was this and how has the
Speaker 3: prevalence of lime disease or the way we study it
Speaker 3: change since then?
Speaker 6: Well, so this is about twenty years ago that I
Speaker 6: got this first experience working with lime disease. And I'd
Speaker 6: say that a lot of what we do, in terms
Speaker 6: of collecting the data in the field, a lot of
Speaker 6: that has sort of stayed the same. You know, we
Speaker 6: go out and we trap these mammals. We look at
Speaker 6: how many ticks they have on them. We can test
Speaker 6: their tissues for infection prevalence. I would say in the
Speaker 6: lab is where things have changed, where we have much
Speaker 6: more sensitive techniques, much more specific techniques to detect pathogens.
Speaker 6: So for a long time, what we do is we
Speaker 6: would look for the bacteria under dark field microscopy. You
Speaker 6: could see them swimming around.
Speaker 3: So dark field my cross b side note is when
Speaker 3: the background of the object you're looking at is dark.
Speaker 3: So the background is dark, it's good for spying on
Speaker 3: things that you can't stain or that are transparent and
Speaker 3: don't absorb a lot of light.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of like.
Speaker 3: Photographing your evening look if you were a limespier keet
Speaker 3: and no offense, but I would hate you.
Speaker 6: And so they're pretty distinctive. You know that you have
Speaker 6: a spirakeat, but we didn't necessarily know what species of
Speaker 6: a spire heat we had, and so now we're realizing
Speaker 6: that there's all of this diversity by using much more
Speaker 6: specific sequencing methods, and now of course we can look
Speaker 6: for not only the spire heat, but other microbes and
Speaker 6: other bacteria viruses that are also coexisting in.
Speaker 5: This tick milieu.
Speaker 6: So we can kind of look at that whole community
Speaker 6: within a tick as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's direct our gaze and will zoom in
Speaker 3: online under the scope. And when you talk about lime
Speaker 3: disease and being a spira keyt, can you kind of
Speaker 3: explain what that looks like? And if you're like looking
Speaker 3: at a drop of blood, is it hard to come
Speaker 3: by the spira keet or is it just allows you
Speaker 3: with spira keats? Is it just a spira keet party
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 5: Yeah? No, that's a really good question.
Speaker 6: So it turns out there are a lot of different
Speaker 6: spire heats and some of them hang out in the blood.
Speaker 6: These tend to be relapsing fever brilliant and these are
Speaker 6: things like Brillia mimotoi or early A correesi. These are
Speaker 6: different types of spirokeuse, the one that causes lime disease
Speaker 6: and related ones. They actually don't hang out in the
Speaker 6: blood for very long.
Speaker 3: What really, This totally surprised me, and to be honest,
Speaker 3: ticked me off a little bit.
Speaker 4: I said it.
Speaker 6: They passed through the blood really briefly. Actually detecting them
Speaker 6: in blood is not the best way to pick up
Speaker 6: lime disease infection prevalence, so for that we actually go
Speaker 6: for tissue. So we'll try to get some ear tissue,
Speaker 6: or if you have a whole animal, you can go
Speaker 6: for some other organ. That's where the burlier Bergorpheri, the
Speaker 6: pathogen that causes lime disease, that's where it will migrate
Speaker 6: to eventually and sort of hang out. And the blood
Speaker 6: it depends on what kind of brillier you're talking about,
Speaker 6: but if you do see one, what it looks like
Speaker 6: is just a little squiggle and they kind of vibrate
Speaker 6: like vibraingly.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: One nice thing about the semester being over is I
Speaker 6: actually get back into the field and back into the lab,
Speaker 6: and so earlier this week I was culturing some bacteria
Speaker 6: and it was so nice to sort of see again
Speaker 6: under the microscope. I still love using looking under microscopes,
Speaker 6: and so that was really fun. And when you see
Speaker 6: the spire keats, they kind of vibrate in the culture
Speaker 6: and the liquid culture that we grow.
Speaker 5: Them in.
Speaker 6: When they kind of look I was putting a talk
Speaker 6: together recently and I made a little pun about a
Speaker 6: twist of lime, which I was very pleased with and
Speaker 6: then I realized it kind of does they do almost
Speaker 6: look like a twist of lime, you know when it
Speaker 6: kind of curls around, So that's sort of what they
Speaker 6: look like, and they and they move so they can
Speaker 6: they use that sort of their whole body to sort
Speaker 6: of corkscrew through things, and that's how they can tunnel
Speaker 6: into tissues.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's such a brilliant and wonderful visual pun You
Speaker 3: get like twenty dad joke points for that. That's amazing. Yes,
Speaker 3: And before we dive more into lime, can you give
Speaker 3: me kind of just an overview of some tickborn diseases
Speaker 3: that people might be a little bit worried about. I know,
Speaker 3: in the tic episode, I've focused a lot on us,
Speaker 3: but I've heard from Australian friends that there's like a
Speaker 3: tick paralysis, Like, what are some of the baddies out there?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, certainly lime disease is the most prevalent
Speaker 6: one that most people will know about. There are actually
Speaker 6: several different species of Brillia that cause lime disease. They're
Speaker 6: in the United States and North America. We have Brillia
Speaker 6: burgdor frye.
Speaker 5: In Europe.
Speaker 6: There are other species like Brillia fzellii and Brillia garni.
Speaker 6: They all cause what's called collectively lime burrilliosis.
Speaker 3: So there can be different species of Berrillia that are
Speaker 3: transmitted by ticks and cause lime disease. Now, of the
Speaker 3: fifty two identified species of Barillia, twenty one are known
Speaker 3: to cause lime disease or burrelliosis. Now, if you look
Speaker 3: up a lime spirakeat they're kind of like curly little
Speaker 3: worm looking bacteria or bits of those little paper streamers
Speaker 3: that spring forth from a New Year popper. You know,
Speaker 3: those things are pop those but they're alive and they
Speaker 3: live in your body. Okay, so a twist of lime
Speaker 3: is brilliant. Oh, and that Australian paralysis tick. They tend
Speaker 3: to be on the eastern coastline of Australia. And it's
Speaker 3: not a pathogen that does the paralysizing, but a neurotoxin
Speaker 3: in their saliva. It can cause paralysis and respiratory failure,
Speaker 3: even death. So what is our motto, check your crevice
Speaker 3: is now, let's zoom out a little bit and back
Speaker 3: to some other diseases.
Speaker 6: And then in terms of other pathogens, I mean, I
Speaker 6: think one of the scariest ones to me is poasen virus,
Speaker 6: which is a virus obviously, but what's really scary about
Speaker 6: it is it can get transmitted really quickly after a
Speaker 6: tick attaches, and so within minutes, maybe fifteen minutes or so,
Speaker 6: it can be transmitted and it's fatal. And so that
Speaker 6: that sort of cushion of time that we have with
Speaker 6: detecting a tick for lime disease prevention, we don't actually
Speaker 6: have that for poalsen virus.
Speaker 3: That sucks.
Speaker 5: Luckily, it's not very common.
Speaker 4: What's the range of that.
Speaker 6: It's mostly in the Northeast and a little bit in
Speaker 6: the Midwest, I believe, but it's pretty limited in distribution.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I looked into Poasin disease, named for an
Speaker 3: unfortunate city in Ontario, Canada, the tourist board of which
Speaker 3: is probably not stoked because this viral disease not a
Speaker 3: good one. So some folks won't have any signs, but
Speaker 3: if you're infected, symptoms could include fever, headache, vomiting, weakness, confusion,
Speaker 3: a loss of coordination, trouble speaking, memory loss, and encephalitis,
Speaker 3: which is swelling of the brain. Just the last month,
Speaker 3: two folks from Hampton, New Jersey, have come down with
Speaker 3: poasan virus from a tick bite, and one eighty year
Speaker 3: old armand des A Moreau.
Speaker 4: Did not survive.
Speaker 3: So only thirty three people were diagnosed with it in
Speaker 3: the US last year, so it's very rare, but it
Speaker 3: can be fatal, so check yourself before it tick recks yourself.
Speaker 6: And then other diseases that are emerging are babiziosis, which
Speaker 6: is caused by a parasite. Actually it's a protozoin parasite
Speaker 6: that's it's ap complex and so it's related to malaria.
Speaker 6: So ticks can harbor all these different kinds of pathogens,
Speaker 6: really diverse and varied. And babeziosis can be caused by
Speaker 6: Bibesia microdi in the East Coast, and more recently we've
Speaker 6: been doing some work on bibiziosis in the West Coast
Speaker 6: and it turns out that it's caused by a different
Speaker 6: parasite that's called Bibezia duncan i that has a really
Speaker 6: different life history, different tick associations, different seasonality.
Speaker 3: Okay, Bibizia is not the same as Burrellia, now, I know,
Speaker 3: I know. They sound like names of twin Ukrainian princesses.
Speaker 3: But Bizia is around little protozoan parasite. It lives in
Speaker 3: red blood cells and it gives you symptoms like malaria.
Speaker 3: Sometimes anti malarial drugs are used in treatment. Now, our
Speaker 3: other enemy, Burrellia, is that twist of lime spiro keet
Speaker 3: so Bibisia round lives in the blood cells Burrellia spiral
Speaker 3: and it goes honky tonkin. It could be anywhere in
Speaker 3: your body. It's hard to find. So guess what They
Speaker 3: both suck And they could both come from a tick.
Speaker 3: So thanks you tiny thirsty little assholes.
Speaker 6: And so one of the things in my work that
Speaker 6: I'm really interested in exploring is how these ecological changes
Speaker 6: can lead to differences and how a pathogen is transmitted
Speaker 6: and what does that mean for you know, disease control
Speaker 6: and sort of public health awareness, because these different ticks
Speaker 6: have different affinities for biting different people and then they can,
Speaker 6: you know, affect different populations. So you need to know
Speaker 6: what kind of what the vector is. You need to
Speaker 6: know where it's found. So there's so many different tick species.
Speaker 6: One tick species might transmit one pathogen and another one
Speaker 6: might transmit another one. But a lot of people don't
Speaker 6: really recognize that there are multiple tick species and that
Speaker 6: they're a very specific hosts associations, and so you know,
Speaker 6: sort of getting the word out on that is, you know,
Speaker 6: one of my research goals.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there are people wondering, like who's it more risk?
Speaker 3: Do they really prefer particular people? Like if you have
Speaker 3: more sugar in your blood, or you're more caffeinated, or
Speaker 3: redheads for example, fake redhead, are they at greater.
Speaker 5: Risk for instance?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean there are definitely personal differences between people,
Speaker 6: so I personally do not I don't seem to be
Speaker 6: very light by ticks in terms of a blood meal.
Speaker 6: I've had very few ticks attached to me. And you know,
Speaker 6: despite working in tick board diseases for over twenty years,
Speaker 6: I think I've maybe have had two ticks attached to me.
Speaker 5: Wow, two only too in that whole time.
Speaker 6: And last year we actually tried to I tried to
Speaker 6: get a tick to bite me for a video segment
Speaker 6: that this other program was putting on, and it would
Speaker 6: it refused to bite me. It actually I saw it
Speaker 6: as it rolled itself off of my arm. So, you know,
Speaker 6: I think maybe a common theme is that people that
Speaker 6: work on these things are not necessarily the most prone
Speaker 6: to getting lots of tick bites, maybe just out of
Speaker 6: selection or you know, you know, these sorts of occupational hazards.
Speaker 6: But so I know that I am not preferred by ticks,
Speaker 6: and I know that you know, other people, if they
Speaker 6: come into the field with me for an.
Speaker 5: Hour, they will get a tick bite.
Speaker 6: So there are definitely those preferences, but I don't know
Speaker 6: if anyone is really really understands what's driving that, what
Speaker 6: are the mechanisms behind that. Ticks also have preferences for
Speaker 6: different host species as well in the field. So we
Speaker 6: know that like in California we have this amazing tick
Speaker 6: host that's a western fence lizard.
Speaker 5: Those are the blue bellied lizards.
Speaker 6: That you often see, bright blue bellies, really ubiquitous in California.
Speaker 6: Western black leg a tick that we have here, really
Speaker 6: loves that host.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I hate how cute This next part is
Speaker 3: thinking of ticks being like whoopy doo, what do I want.
Speaker 6: Someone actually did an experiment where they gave them a
Speaker 6: little bunch of tunnels to different hosts, and one of
Speaker 6: them had a lizard, one of them had a mouse,
Speaker 6: and one of them had a bird, and most of
Speaker 6: the ticks went for the lizard. So they are picking
Speaker 6: up on pheromones or chemicals or something. But it's really
Speaker 6: a little bit unclear what that is specifically.
Speaker 3: And now that species, if lizard has something in its
Speaker 3: blood that kind of interacts with the lime spier, keep
Speaker 3: what is happening there?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So that is another reason why that host is
Speaker 6: so important is that in its blood it has part
Speaker 6: of the immune system. It has proteins that will actually
Speaker 6: kill the lime disease bacteria. And so if a tick
Speaker 6: is infected with lime disease with the pathogen and it
Speaker 6: bites a lizard, that lizard's blood, the immune system of
Speaker 6: the lizard will kill the bacteria in the tick and
Speaker 6: those ticks will all drop off uninfected.
Speaker 5: All have She's having wow.
Speaker 6: So so yeah, so it's an amazing interaction that we
Speaker 6: have here in California.
Speaker 3: I understand also that possums are big tick eaters. Do
Speaker 3: they get bitten by ticks a lot or do they
Speaker 3: just do the biting of the ticks?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I think they What they do is the
Speaker 6: ticks will bite them and then they'll end up biting
Speaker 6: them off and eating them, and many of them don't survive.
Speaker 3: God, I need more possums and more western fence. I
Speaker 3: don't want the possums to eat the lizard though, just
Speaker 3: leave them alone. And so when it comes to lyme disease,
Speaker 3: can you explain what is happening with it?
Speaker 4: What does it do? How does it infect us?
Speaker 6: Yeah, so when a tick is out looking for a
Speaker 6: bled meal. So you know these ticks, the Eastern tick,
Speaker 6: the western and the western black leg at tick in California,
Speaker 6: they're sort of related species and they have really similar
Speaker 6: morphology and sort of general life history traits. But in
Speaker 6: California we have they have a three year life cycle.
Speaker 6: So they go from a larval stage, which is the smallest,
Speaker 6: tiniest stage, to the nymphal stage to the adult.
Speaker 3: Stage ps side note, So tick larvae have six legs
Speaker 3: and then they molt, and the nymphs have eight legs.
Speaker 3: They eat, they molt, the nymphs have eight so eggs,
Speaker 3: and then larvae with six legs and nymphs and up
Speaker 3: have eight legs just in case you're like squint counting
Speaker 3: at one under a microscope.
Speaker 6: And each of those life stages takes a single blood meal.
Speaker 6: So they will find a host and attached to it,
Speaker 6: stay on for three to seven days, take a big
Speaker 6: blood meal, and then drop off until they molt into
Speaker 6: the next stage. And so each of those blood meals
Speaker 6: is an opportunity for that tick to pick up the
Speaker 6: lime disease bacteria because fortunately there's no vertical transmission of
Speaker 6: the bacteria, so an adult female that is infected does
Speaker 6: not transmit that pathogen to her offspring, to her copious
Speaker 6: you know, thousands of larvae that she lays in these eggs.
Speaker 6: So fortunately the smallest stage of these ticks, which are
Speaker 6: really really tiny. I mean, if you think a poppy
Speaker 6: seed is small, these are about a tenth the size
Speaker 6: of that what And they're sometimes transparent, so they're incredibly
Speaker 6: hard to see.
Speaker 3: So side note, those larval ticks have six legs once again,
Speaker 3: and they're like tiny, tiny little ghosts. And sometimes they're
Speaker 3: called seed ticks. And I have heard ghoulish reports of
Speaker 3: walking through a tick bomb containing thousands of these newly
Speaker 3: hatched nightmares. But they tend not to have diseases because
Speaker 3: they've not fed yet. But their first meal is where
Speaker 3: they can pick things up, just like licking doorknobs. So
Speaker 3: carry duct tape and pick them off you. Thusly you
Speaker 3: can just kind of wax a bunch of baby seed
Speaker 3: ticks off of your body and clothes.
Speaker 4: Isn't that disgusting? But it works?
Speaker 3: And then throw all your clothes in the dryer on high.
Speaker 3: When you get home, take a shower, maybe douse yourself
Speaker 3: in holy wood, take a priest to raging waters and
Speaker 3: be like Father bless this mess.
Speaker 4: Also do a crevice check.
Speaker 3: But don't worry too much about the larval ones.
Speaker 6: Andrea says, so fortunately they are not infected when they
Speaker 6: hatch out of their eggs, and so they can only
Speaker 6: get infected when they take their first blood meal from
Speaker 6: an infected host. So first I have to find a host,
Speaker 6: and then if it's uninfected, then they remain uninfected. And
Speaker 6: if it is infected, then that's when they can pick
Speaker 6: it up. And so it's that next stage, that nymphle stage,
Speaker 6: where they can first transmit the pathogen. And so a
Speaker 6: lot of my work is really looking at where are
Speaker 6: these larval ticks taking their blood meal? Is it and
Speaker 6: sort of what is available to them in their community,
Speaker 6: and what are their infection prevalences and how good are
Speaker 6: they at transmitting the pathogen because it's that nymphal stage
Speaker 6: that's still pretty small that if it bites you, that
Speaker 6: niphle stage transmits most of the lime disease cases in
Speaker 6: the United States.
Speaker 3: So remember eggs. And then a six legged larval seed
Speaker 3: tick that drinks annimal blood like a horror villain and
Speaker 3: gets infected with a disease, molting to become a tiny,
Speaker 3: tiny poppy seed disease infected eight legged nymph. Then they
Speaker 3: latch onto your sacred butt crack where it can spread
Speaker 3: infection before molting into an adult, which can also spread infection.
Speaker 6: And so when that tick attaches to you, it has to,
Speaker 6: you know, prepare itself. It takes a while, about thirty
Speaker 6: six hours or so before anything really gets injected into you.
Speaker 6: And at that point is when you start to get
Speaker 6: the bacteria getting injected into you as it salivates into you.
Speaker 5: And then that.
Speaker 6: Bacteria, as I said, it only stays in that local
Speaker 6: area near the tick bite for a very short time.
Speaker 6: It quickly disseminates through the blood, through the tissues into
Speaker 6: all over the body. And so that's why lame disease
Speaker 6: is so hard to diagnose, is it We don't really
Speaker 6: know where to best look for it. And blood draws,
Speaker 6: which are the most common ways to detect a lot
Speaker 6: of other pathogens, don't they work for lime disease.
Speaker 3: Just feel free to let out a collective, frustrated grown
Speaker 3: or scream like a klingon grieving a howl into the sky.
Speaker 3: I know I did now remember over three hundred thousand
Speaker 3: new cases of lime a year in the US, and
Speaker 3: a lot of people might be getting the wrong tests.
Speaker 3: Also side note, I would like to take this opportunity
Speaker 3: to just say I had a weird, low grade anxiety
Speaker 3: attack writing and researching this episode.
Speaker 4: Because lime disease is.
Speaker 3: Such a controversial topic, some people might not know that
Speaker 3: I know eight people who have had lime disease, and
Speaker 3: each of them struggled not only with a bunch of
Speaker 3: physical issues like joint pains and fatigue and headache and
Speaker 3: autoimmune issues and brain fog, but also had to deal
Speaker 3: with this weird emotional maze of some people or some
Speaker 3: doctors not believing that they were still struggling with lime
Speaker 3: symptoms after treatment. So this is known as the lime wars. Now,
Speaker 3: in terms of chronic lime disease, the CDC does not
Speaker 3: recognize chronic lime disease as a thing now. Symptoms could
Speaker 3: linger for years, and some doctors do acknowledge post treatment
Speaker 3: lime disorder. Now, around ten percent of patients who get
Speaker 3: lime disease and are treated for a few weeks with
Speaker 3: antibiotics won't fully recover, so these patients might ask for
Speaker 3: longer courses of antibiotics or have to follow certain anti
Speaker 3: inflammatory dietary protocol. They might try supplements or other ways
Speaker 3: to try to fight this biakeet, which some research suggests
Speaker 3: can hide in a little cloak called a biofilm, so
Speaker 3: it's hard to kill. So chronic lime disease poo pooed
Speaker 3: by many. Some doctors acknowledge post treatment lime disorder, but
Speaker 3: there's still a lot of flim flam out there. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of skepticism. There's also a lot of people
Speaker 3: who are just still suffering from symptoms of lime disease,
Speaker 3: and people don't know why. I read a blog post
Speaker 3: from a doctor at Harvard who said it reminds him
Speaker 3: of the first stages of HIV and AIDS, when there
Speaker 3: are a lot of rumors and not a lot of research,
Speaker 3: and a lot of patients were getting blown off by doctors,
Speaker 3: so more research. In hindsight, we'll probably look back and think, Wow,
Speaker 3: what a big, murky mess. But the first step to
Speaker 3: any of this is getting a diagnosis, which Andreas said
Speaker 3: that blood draws don't really work that well for lime
Speaker 3: disease detection.
Speaker 4: What does work?
Speaker 3: I mean, I know, it seems like so many people
Speaker 3: are frustrated by maybe feeling like they have lime disease,
Speaker 3: but their tests show they're fine. So what is medical
Speaker 3: science doing to address that?
Speaker 6: So, you know, erology is one way that you can
Speaker 6: detect things without detecting the thing, right, you're detecting the
Speaker 6: signal sort of the immune response to the pathogen that
Speaker 6: you're interested in. The problem with zerology is not very specific,
Speaker 6: and so you often get cross reactivity, so you'll get
Speaker 6: things that will have the same signal, and so it's
Speaker 6: really hard to say for sure whether or not this
Speaker 6: zerological signal matches the pathogen that you want to definitively diagnose.
Speaker 4: Oh hey, seriologists holler at your dad.
Speaker 6: And so that's why it takes so many markers of
Speaker 6: these zerological approaches to be able to say this is
Speaker 6: definitely a lime disease case. And so this is what
Speaker 6: led to the CDC two tiered you know, testing to
Speaker 6: make sure that you are not picking up false positives.
Speaker 6: Now there are approaches now that people are trying to
Speaker 6: develop to be more specific and more sensitive, you know.
Speaker 6: So one possibility is maybe looking at the host immune response.
Speaker 6: Now we can look at gene expression in different individuals,
Speaker 6: and it's becoming cheaper and cheaper to do that, and
Speaker 6: so one way might be to look at what genes
Speaker 6: are upregulated in an individual who has had acute infection
Speaker 6: with lime disease or maybe a longer term infection with
Speaker 6: lime disease. And so there are other methods and maybe
Speaker 6: other secreted proteins that might also be picked up by
Speaker 6: some more sensitive tests, and so there are people that
Speaker 6: are working on better diagnosis. But it is a really
Speaker 6: difficult problem. It's something that it just really has to
Speaker 6: do with the way that the bacteria behaves in our bodies.
Speaker 6: It doesn't stay in one place for us to pick
Speaker 6: up really easily.
Speaker 4: Okay, So side note.
Speaker 3: I looked up what these gene expression tests are all about,
Speaker 3: and a twenty sixteen study published by s F University
Speaker 3: and Johns Hopkins University show that in people infected with Burrellia, remember,
Speaker 3: causes lime. There's a unique gene expression pattern in their
Speaker 3: white blood cells, so certain genes turn on or off
Speaker 3: when infected with lime, and that continues even after their
Speaker 3: antibiotic treatment. So more of that gene expression testing might
Speaker 3: be on the horizon, or or you could just ask
Speaker 3: a witch to turn you into a rat today. Why
Speaker 3: can't they use the same type of tissue tests that
Speaker 3: you would use on say a mouse in the field,
Speaker 3: on just a human being could use the same kind
Speaker 3: of thing, like I'll side your piece of my ear.
Speaker 5: Actually, I don't know.
Speaker 6: I mean we probably we know that when we take
Speaker 6: a little bit of the mouse ear that we are
Speaker 6: not necessarily catching every single case, right, it's kind of
Speaker 6: a sample, and so our objective isn't necessarily to diagnose
Speaker 6: every single mouse. We're trying to get kind of a
Speaker 6: population level average, and so the objectives are a little
Speaker 6: bit different. But I do think that probably tissue biopsies
Speaker 6: would be more effective than blood draws. But it's really
Speaker 6: hard to convince people to undergo a tissue biopsy, right,
Speaker 6: It just I don't think it's practical, and so it
Speaker 6: hasn't really been discussed as a potential way forward. But
Speaker 6: certainly you know if at the site of the tick bite,
Speaker 6: if you get it early enough, a tissue biopsy would
Speaker 6: you would get the bacteria there.
Speaker 3: They should just offer free ear piercings with every test.
Speaker 3: That way, at least you walk away with a new
Speaker 3: piercing tiny bit of tissue.
Speaker 4: I'm sure that it work fine. Okay.
Speaker 3: Side note, I just looked up how much gauging your
Speaker 3: ears cost and it can be like seventy five bucks
Speaker 3: a pop. But lime disease tests could be in the hundreds,
Speaker 3: depending on your insurance. Now, they usually start with an
Speaker 3: enzyme linked immunoabsorbent assay or an ELISA test. Those look
Speaker 3: for antibodies, and then something called a Western blot test
Speaker 3: can confirm, but according to some research, those are only
Speaker 3: about fifty percent accurate. Now, some folks who have been
Speaker 3: diagnosed with limes say that the immunoblot igen X tests
Speaker 3: are more effective at detecting it. But ask your own
Speaker 3: doctors if this is something you suspect that you have. Again,
Speaker 3: this is just a podcast. I'm not your doctor.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry. Now.
Speaker 3: In researching this, I stumbled across just such a dark
Speaker 3: go fund me blog post from the company just subtly
Speaker 3: suggesting the best ways to crowdfund for lime treatment since
Speaker 3: most insurance companies don't cover much beyond that first round
Speaker 3: of antibiotics for an initial diagnosis. So good to know
Speaker 3: that help is out there in the form of suggestions
Speaker 3: on how to crowdfund your medical treatment here in America.
Speaker 3: And so, what exactly is lime doing in the body?
Speaker 3: Is it causing a lot of inflammation? Is it affecting
Speaker 3: neurological function, joints? Where is it hanging out?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean pretty much all those things you just mentioned.
Speaker 6: I mean it will go. It'll sort of embed itself
Speaker 6: into joints, into muscular tissue, neurological tissue, and cause inflammation
Speaker 6: and a lot of what we think some of the
Speaker 6: maybe longer term symptoms might be. Or it might just
Speaker 6: actually be the immune response responding to that infection of
Speaker 6: trying to fight it. So sort of, you know, a
Speaker 6: regulated cytokine inflammation that leads to a lot of the
Speaker 6: swelling and pain that people associate as well.
Speaker 3: So the bodies of immune system kind of freaks out,
Speaker 3: and chemical messengers name cytokines might kind of still be
Speaker 3: ringing the old fire alarm, which triggers inflammation, which can
Speaker 3: cause arthritis like symptoms. Now, some folks with post treatment
Speaker 3: lime seem to feel better on anti inflammatory diets. You know,
Speaker 3: we skip ingredients like gluten or sugar. So if someone
Speaker 3: doesn't have technically celiac disease, which in itself is a
Speaker 3: serious and huge bummer, but someone's eating gluten free or
Speaker 3: sugar free anyway, Just give people a break. People know
Speaker 3: their own bodies best. Let them eat or not eat
Speaker 3: what they don't want to eat or not eat anyway.
Speaker 3: Autoimmune disease and inflammation to be discussed in a future
Speaker 3: rheumatology and or immunology episode, is that, how maybe it
Speaker 3: could be linked to autoimmune disease because your body's immune
Speaker 3: system just freaks out.
Speaker 6: There are some similarities to how some people respond to
Speaker 6: a lime infection and some autoimmune diseases. It does seem
Speaker 6: like it may have some sort of long lasting immune
Speaker 6: consequences that, you know, maybe even after the pathogen is gone,
Speaker 6: it might still be that the immune system is sort
Speaker 6: of sort of oversensitized.
Speaker 3: Do you ever have to get involved with the debate
Speaker 3: between late stage lime and chronic limes? Do you kind
Speaker 3: of stay apart from that medical kind of controversy or
Speaker 3: do you have to weigh in it all well.
Speaker 6: I actually did a short post doc where I studied
Speaker 6: that issue where we were really trying to look for
Speaker 6: some of these gene expression markers in people with this
Speaker 6: late late stage lime disease. We didn't really find a
Speaker 6: really clear signal there. So I have worked a little
Speaker 6: bit on it, and it's really complicated there. I know
Speaker 6: there are good people that are trying to come up
Speaker 6: with better diagnostic tools, and people that are trying to
Speaker 6: work on vaccines and on all these different things. The
Speaker 6: bulk of my work is really on the ecology. And
Speaker 6: so you know, one thing I always say is that
Speaker 6: if you have a tick, if you pull the tick
Speaker 6: off of you, we can test that tick and be
Speaker 6: fairly certain whether or not it's infected or not, because
Speaker 6: it's much easier to do that than to try to
Speaker 6: query an entire human body right and not really knowing
Speaker 6: whether or not we're picking up the pathage or not.
Speaker 6: But if you give us a tick, we'll crush the
Speaker 6: whole darn thing up exactly.
Speaker 4: See I'm crushing.
Speaker 6: It, and we can look for the pathogen in the tick.
Speaker 6: So we can't really do that with humans, so you know,
Speaker 6: we can do that with a tick.
Speaker 5: And so a lot.
Speaker 6: Of my work is really really focused on the tick
Speaker 6: ause we can learn so much from it. Our diagnostic
Speaker 6: tests and tools are much more effective when you have
Speaker 6: a tick.
Speaker 3: If people say, pick a tick off and they put
Speaker 3: it in a freezer bag, you know, like a little ziploc.
Speaker 3: Are there labs that would be like send me your
Speaker 3: ticks or is that pretty hard to come by?
Speaker 6: There are actually increasing the numbers of labs that will
Speaker 6: do that. You can send them your ticks. I know
Speaker 6: Area Line Foundation does that Tick Encounter might also do that.
Speaker 6: I just heard about another organization that'll take your pets
Speaker 6: ticks as well, and they don't necessarily test them all
Speaker 6: and they and you may not necessarily get a test
Speaker 6: result as a result right away. But I know there
Speaker 6: are these a lot of agencies that are trying to
Speaker 6: use this method to surveil tickboarn pathogens much more broadly
Speaker 6: and comprehensively by having people send in their ticks.
Speaker 3: Side note, Okay, I look this up and the tick
Speaker 3: encounter dot org site. Remember that was the nonprofit that
Speaker 3: acarologists Doctor Nita Pardonani Connolly chose they have great resources.
Speaker 3: That's tick encounter dot org. And they pointed to tick
Speaker 3: report dot com which has instructions on how to send
Speaker 3: in a tick for testing, and it costs fifty bucks
Speaker 3: per tick. But it includes Burrellia which is the spirokeet,
Speaker 3: the lime causing one, and Pibisia which is that round
Speaker 3: malaria like protozoin. Also in that same test, it includes
Speaker 3: powassin and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a whole host of
Speaker 3: things and results can come back in seventy two hours.
Speaker 3: So that's tickreport dot com. So they have info on
Speaker 3: how to send in your non alive ticks that you
Speaker 3: have plucked off of your or a loved one's body,
Speaker 3: good ticks that is. They also send a micrograph of
Speaker 3: it in case you just want to look at it
Speaker 3: up close. Maybe print out a picture and have it framed,
Speaker 3: make a dartboard. Now, what about distribution of tick born diseases.
Speaker 3: As a disease ecologist, Andrea fundamentally studies where these bad
Speaker 3: feeling causing things dwell. And now one thing that I
Speaker 3: found so fascinating looking at your research is the percentage
Speaker 3: of ticks that are infected with lime, even on the
Speaker 3: West Coast. It seems like a big myth is that
Speaker 3: lime is only in the northeast, and chances are there's
Speaker 3: no way you could get it in California.
Speaker 1: But you do.
Speaker 3: You do a lot of field work, like in Tilden
Speaker 3: and in the areas around San Francisco.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I do, so most of my field sites are
Speaker 6: from northern California.
Speaker 5: Actually, the hotbed.
Speaker 6: Of lime disease on the West Coast is from about
Speaker 6: I would say, the around San Francisco up north into
Speaker 6: Mendoesino County along the coast. They need, we need certain conditions,
Speaker 6: so they need it to be moist, they need certain habitat,
Speaker 6: they need to have all of these different hosts required
Speaker 6: to complete their life cycle. And so there's really kind
Speaker 6: of a narrow range where they can be found. But
Speaker 6: in California, that range is sort of the entire coastal
Speaker 6: region of California north of i'd say Santa Cruzer. So
Speaker 6: after that flower down south, it becomes much too dry
Speaker 6: for them, although you do still see them, and I
Speaker 6: do have some projects down south, so I don't want
Speaker 6: to say that it's not there, but the majority of
Speaker 6: tick abundance, how the highest tick densities are along those
Speaker 6: northern areas, and also infection prevalence can reach you know,
Speaker 6: twenty to twenty five percent in certain areas, so pretty
Speaker 6: high prevalences.
Speaker 4: Twenty five percent.
Speaker 3: There's so much groaning in this episode, but I feel
Speaker 3: like it's warranted.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But I think one of the things that distinguishes
Speaker 6: how the West Coast is different from the East Coast
Speaker 6: isn't just the ecology. It's also the way that humans
Speaker 6: interact with their environment. And so I think on the
Speaker 6: East Coast, a lot of people live in the woods.
Speaker 6: You know, they have these houses that are surrounded by
Speaker 6: secondary forests that has been known to come back with
Speaker 6: lots of the hosts that are responsible for maintaining tick populations.
Speaker 6: In California, we have a lot more sort of primary
Speaker 6: growth forests that hasn't been cut down before. We have
Speaker 6: a lot of logged areas too as well.
Speaker 5: But the way people.
Speaker 6: Come into contact with with ticks, it tends to not
Speaker 6: be around the home as much. You know, most people
Speaker 6: live in more dense urban areas and so to encounter
Speaker 6: a tick, it kind of means you're camping or you're biking,
Speaker 6: or you're going on a hike or something and so,
Speaker 6: and a lot of the work that I'm doing is
Speaker 6: looking at how habitat fragmentation size influences things like tick
Speaker 6: abundance and also the community composition of the vertebrate hosts
Speaker 6: that are involved in tick ecology. And so some of
Speaker 6: the bigger sites are where we have more diverse roadent
Speaker 6: communities and where we also have top predators, so we
Speaker 6: actually have a lot of intact, relatively intact food webs,
Speaker 6: and the West Coast where we have sites with puma
Speaker 6: still wandering around, and so those help to control the
Speaker 6: deer populations, and this is something that they don't have
Speaker 6: on the East Coast. So I think a lot of
Speaker 6: these ecological differences also are shape being the differences that
Speaker 6: we see in lime disease ecology in California.
Speaker 3: I was going to put a really bitchy West Coast
Speaker 3: best coast clip here, but honestly, all coasts and areas
Speaker 3: inland are lovely. We really don't need to heighten these
Speaker 3: lime wars with any regional rivalries. We may have ticks
Speaker 3: crawling around our crotches giving us diseases, we don't need
Speaker 3: any more drama today. I love you all. Please check
Speaker 3: your bodily crevices. Yeah, you know, I've seen some people
Speaker 3: argue that doing more deer hunting would actually help control
Speaker 3: the deer population, and it's kind of better ecologically than
Speaker 3: maybe eating factory farmed meat as a disease. Ecologists, do
Speaker 3: you see too high a deer population is a kind
Speaker 3: of a consistent problem or is that a myth?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: I mean, certainly on the East Coast, the deer populations
Speaker 6: are really unchecked, right. There isn't that much hunting and
Speaker 6: there are no top predators that are keeping those populations down,
Speaker 6: so deer are important part of that equation. I think
Speaker 6: here in California the deer populations are a little bit
Speaker 6: more stable.
Speaker 5: They have predation.
Speaker 6: I don't know if hunting is more or less common here,
Speaker 6: but I certainly think that, especially in areas where you
Speaker 6: don't have natural predators, of deer hunting might actually help
Speaker 6: stabilize those populations.
Speaker 3: Right, And I know different wildlife ecologists advocate for that.
Speaker 3: I'm sure some others are disagree with it, but it
Speaker 3: does seem if we've killed off a lot of the
Speaker 3: wolves and the pumas in some areas that everything could
Speaker 3: kind of get.
Speaker 4: Out of whack a little bit. M okay.
Speaker 3: Quick side note, I just read an article that addressed
Speaker 3: Connecticut deer populations and although they are reaching lower, hill
Speaker 3: healthier levels due to some yearly hunts, one guy, Stefano Zandri,
Speaker 3: who's a chairman of a deer management implementation committee, says
Speaker 3: that winter flyover counts like a census of deer averaged
Speaker 3: forty two deer per square mile in some parts of Connecticut,
Speaker 3: and some ecologists want to see it closer to twenty.
Speaker 3: So I also started getting lost looking at statistics and
Speaker 3: figures of roadkill incidents with deer before these town hunts
Speaker 3: were started, and about an equal number of deer died
Speaker 3: from being hit by cars as do now from hunting.
Speaker 3: But now the roadkilled deaths have plummeted, so about as
Speaker 3: many deer die with fewer accidents and more deer used
Speaker 3: for food. So I'm very much not a person who
Speaker 3: loves to think about animals being slaughtered, but ecologically I
Speaker 3: see the pro Connecticut deer hunting point. I'm so sorry, dear.
Speaker 3: What about speaking of meat, what about this lone star
Speaker 3: tick meat allergy situation?
Speaker 5: What is oh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, No, that is a really interesting thing. So
Speaker 6: that isn't a pathogen. That is just the saliva of
Speaker 6: the tick, and so the tick doesn't have like another
Speaker 6: it's not transmitting any kind of pathogen. It's just proteins
Speaker 6: in the tick saliva that are inducing this allergy. An
Speaker 6: analergy to alpha gal, which is a protein that is
Speaker 6: found in mammals. So you know, basically it's called a
Speaker 6: red meat allergy, but it's really a mammal allergy.
Speaker 3: Wow, did that start recently or are we just hearing
Speaker 3: about it more?
Speaker 6: You know, it does seem to be much more common,
Speaker 6: and I don't know why. I don't know if it's
Speaker 6: because the ticks aren't becoming more abundant or common, but
Speaker 6: they are a very aggressive tick and they do seem
Speaker 6: their populations do seem to be growing.
Speaker 5: But I don't know.
Speaker 6: I don't work on that species of ticks, so I
Speaker 6: don't know if there's good data to support that or not.
Speaker 6: But certainly the reports of these red meat allergies are
Speaker 6: becoming more common.
Speaker 4: By the bye.
Speaker 3: I was like, lone star ticks. Yeah, they got a
Speaker 3: big white dot on the back. I got it, but
Speaker 3: I just looked it up and only the adult females do.
Speaker 3: So tickincounter dot Org has you covered on what every
Speaker 3: stage looks like, and it also says that lone star
Speaker 3: ticks are very aggressive biers.
Speaker 4: I hate them.
Speaker 3: Also, ticks, I just fucking do not like you. I
Speaker 3: tried to wonder at you and respect you. But if
Speaker 3: I had a genie with a lamp, I would be
Speaker 3: like number one global warming fix cancer figured out number
Speaker 3: three ticks fuck off and die. Anyway, this alpha GL
Speaker 3: acquired meat allergy with lone star ticks can cause serious
Speaker 3: reactions from the meat of mammals, from their dairy products,
Speaker 3: even from gelatin from their hooves or exposure to wool fibers.
Speaker 3: So it's a huge pain of the ass. About five
Speaker 3: thousand people a year in the US get this alpha
Speaker 3: GL sensitivity, which is up from thirty five hundred two
Speaker 3: years ago. Rising temperatures could be a play also in
Speaker 3: a sense just increased awareness. Yeah, I wonder if it's
Speaker 3: just because we have more Twitter, so there's more like
Speaker 3: my cousin got that, you know, or like there's just
Speaker 3: we hear about it more. Are there any myths about
Speaker 3: tickboarn diseases that really as my dad would say, fryer legs,
Speaker 3: which means make you mad.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I think, Well, the biggest one for
Speaker 6: me is that a lot of people think that there
Speaker 6: is no lime disease in California, and you know, as
Speaker 6: someone who has been studying it for a while, that's
Speaker 6: definitely here. You know, when my field assistant our students
Speaker 6: have it an exposure to a tick bite and they
Speaker 6: go in to see a doctor, a lot of times
Speaker 6: they just won't consider lime disease, and you know, and
Speaker 6: we have to tell them, look, we have the ticks
Speaker 6: in this habitat. We know that the infection prevalence is
Speaker 6: twenty percent, so you know, give me the pro antibiotic.
Speaker 6: So we do have to push for that sometimes knowing
Speaker 6: that we are in these risky habitats. But a lot
Speaker 6: of people really don't know about it. You know, it's
Speaker 6: definitely not as common or as prevalent as it is
Speaker 6: on the East Coast.
Speaker 5: There are about a.
Speaker 6: Little over one hundred cases a year in California that
Speaker 6: are not travel associated, so you know, figuring out which
Speaker 6: ones are sort of locally acquired, but it is definitely here,
Speaker 6: and you know, probably is in certain areas more common
Speaker 6: than we think so like having.
Speaker 3: To watch live shows that are actually pre taped and
Speaker 3: aired three hours later. The West Coast gets East Coast feeds,
Speaker 3: just on a little delay this time. I guess it's
Speaker 3: to our benefit. Now, my friends who have been diagnosed
Speaker 3: with lime have mentioned co infections, so I wanted to
Speaker 3: ask what was to deal with that?
Speaker 4: So I did.
Speaker 3: Do you find that there are a lot of co
Speaker 3: infections in ticks? I've heard about that a bit, but
Speaker 3: where maybe someone might not just have line, but they'll
Speaker 3: have a few different things happening at once.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that can certainly happen. I think it's
Speaker 6: more common on the East Coast, where burli at Bergdorfia,
Speaker 6: the lime disease pathogen, and Babizia microdi tend to be
Speaker 6: co transmitted more often than you would expect by a
Speaker 6: random chance. So there are some risk of co infection there.
Speaker 6: But in California we don't see a lot of co infection.
Speaker 6: You know, a lot of the pathogens that we look
Speaker 6: at are pretty rare on their own, and so the
Speaker 6: chances of seeing them in the same tick vector or
Speaker 6: in the same host is pretty rare.
Speaker 3: Okay, So co infections This is like the two Ukrainian princesses,
Speaker 3: Burrellia and Bibizia, just hanging out together in your blood.
Speaker 3: But it's more common on the East coast. Also, I
Speaker 3: don't know anything about Ukrainian royalty, so I just had
Speaker 3: to google.
Speaker 4: Does the Ukraine have princesses?
Speaker 3: And I've found some history on one name, Olga, which
Speaker 3: does not sound like a tick born disease. And then
Speaker 3: I started looking up gendered Ukrainian baby names to see
Speaker 3: if any even sounded remotely like Burrelia or Bibisia. Literally,
Speaker 3: none of the popular Ukrainian baby names even started with
Speaker 3: a bee. They were like Anastasia, Yelizaveta, Aleksandra.
Speaker 4: And I was like, does Ukrainian even have a B?
Speaker 3: Yes, the Ukrainian alphabet does have a B, but shit,
Speaker 3: it's pronounced like a V. So I'm sorry Ukrainians who
Speaker 3: have been screaming at me while you're driving in your commute.
Speaker 3: But Bizia and Burrellia would never be Ukrainian princesses. But
Speaker 3: at least you know now there are different diseases from tics,
Speaker 3: and one is a lime spirokeet burrellia and the other
Speaker 3: is a round parasite that lives in red blood cells.
Speaker 3: But bizia right, Let's just change the subject.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you some Patreon questions listeners? Okay, so
Speaker 3: listeners have a bunch of questions. Okay, So now is
Speaker 3: the time for your questions submitted through Patreon. And before
Speaker 3: we get to those, we have some words from sponsors
Speaker 3: of the show, who make it possible to make a
Speaker 3: donation to a charity of the ologists choosing, and this
Speaker 3: episode we donated too, one being eight two six in
Speaker 3: San Francisco, who hosted Andrea for the recording of this episode,
Speaker 3: and which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting under
Speaker 3: resource students ages six to eighteen with creative and expository
Speaker 3: writing skills. It's a really awesome literacy program. I love them.
Speaker 3: They also have a storefront at eight two six Valencia
Speaker 3: in the Mission District of San Francisco, where you can
Speaker 3: purchase Pirate supplies highly recommended. I have several fake mustaches
Speaker 3: from that establishment. Now, another donation went to the Union
Speaker 3: of Concerned Scientists. Andrea chose them and said they are
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Speaker 4: Okay, back to your questions.
Speaker 3: Ruby Asterich asks how close are we to a human vaccine?
Speaker 3: The dog one is very effective and lifelong ramifications of
Speaker 3: lime disease are awful. So can you tell me a
Speaker 3: little bit about how the vaccine works and how it
Speaker 3: works on pets versus humans.
Speaker 6: So this isn't my area of specialty, but from what
Speaker 6: I understand about the vaccine is that, you know, there
Speaker 6: was a human vaccine that was available and was pretty efficacious,
Speaker 6: and it was taken off the market for a couple
Speaker 6: of reasons. One was that the sales were not that good,
Speaker 6: and the other one was that there was a class
Speaker 6: action lawsuit against the manufacturer. But I think subsequent to
Speaker 6: that they found that there really was no biological reason
Speaker 6: why it should have been taken off the market. And
Speaker 6: so basically what it is is that the you know,
Speaker 6: it was FDA approved already, and so there are vaccines
Speaker 6: in development that are basically the same as the previous vaccine,
Speaker 6: but I think, as far as I don't know of
Speaker 6: any company that has sort of taken that on because
Speaker 6: of the difficulties that they had previously.
Speaker 3: So the Centers for Disease Control website states grimly quote,
Speaker 3: a lime disease vaccine is no longer available. The vaccine
Speaker 3: manufacturer discontinued production in two thousand and two, citing insufficient
Speaker 3: consumer demand.
Speaker 4: End quote.
Speaker 3: I feel tonally, this is like when someone wants to
Speaker 3: shit talk someone else so bad but remains diplomatic, like
Speaker 3: the split is amicable and we request privacy during this time.
Speaker 3: You can vaccinate your dog, though, and according to one
Speaker 3: study published by the Companion Animal Parasites Council, nearly six
Speaker 3: percent of five million dogs tested in the US did
Speaker 3: test positive for lime infection. But the lime vaccine doesn't
Speaker 3: protect against other tickborn infections. So one vet doctor, Betsy Brevitts,
Speaker 3: called the lime vaccine like wearing suspenders when you're already
Speaker 3: wearing a belt. It's a good backup, but the belt
Speaker 3: is really tick control, and that's what's most important. So
Speaker 3: do tick checks whenever your pup comes in from outside potty,
Speaker 3: going out on a wall, or just going romping, and
Speaker 3: ask your vent about good tick killing agents because that's
Speaker 3: number one.
Speaker 4: Same for kiddies.
Speaker 3: Okay, But back to that whom in vaccine, is there
Speaker 3: any hope for us?
Speaker 6: And so there there, it's very likely that a vaccine
Speaker 6: will be developed and then your future because we had
Speaker 6: a good working vaccine before, there's no reason, no biological reason.
Speaker 5: Why we don't have one. Now, I think a lot
Speaker 5: of it is more financial and political.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh that's a bummer. I'm like, get that recipe down,
Speaker 3: let's remake that. I would have that in a second.
Speaker 3: Savashari says, I live in Germany where tick born encephalitis
Speaker 3: has had an outbreak and there's apparently no cure, and
Speaker 3: their husband, a doctor, says that the tick has to
Speaker 3: be on you for two days before you can get
Speaker 3: any diseases from it.
Speaker 4: Heard anything about it.
Speaker 6: I don't know as much about the transmission of tickborn
Speaker 6: and cephalitis, but if it's anything like lime disease, it
Speaker 6: does take a couple of days for pathogens to well,
Speaker 6: at least the you know, bacteria pathogens to be transmitted,
Speaker 6: because the tick just takes a while to have the
Speaker 6: pathogen move from the midgut to the salivary glens and
Speaker 6: sort of settle in for that blood meal. But I'm
Speaker 6: not exactly sure how long it takes for tickborn and cephalitis,
Speaker 6: which I know is a big problem in Europe, and
Speaker 6: it's transmitted by the same tick that transmits lime disease.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 4: Oh really, okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 3: So tick born encephalitis or TB, by the way, can
Speaker 3: be what's called bi phasic. So it first presents with
Speaker 3: either no symptoms or about a week of vague symptoms
Speaker 3: like fever and fatigue, maybe muscle ags, headache, kind of
Speaker 3: barfiness like a flu, and then things calm down, you
Speaker 3: feel better for a week, You're like, look at me,
Speaker 3: let's sprung back. And then the second phase hits and
Speaker 3: that's neurological and it can involve meningitis, brain swelling, paralysis,
Speaker 3: with a death rate of up to two percent. There
Speaker 3: is a vaccine now, so folks in riskier areas for TBE,
Speaker 3: like central Eastern Europe, northern Asia. At least you're as
Speaker 3: protected as our dogs are from lime in America. So
Speaker 3: that's a plus. Oh, back to lime and pets. There
Speaker 3: were more questions about this from Brin Spear, Hannahalise Tricia,
Speaker 3: Emmy B. Marky, Seymour, Sarah Patterson, Any Burwell, and Isabeut
Speaker 3: b Holper. A few different people kind of wanted to
Speaker 3: know if the symptoms and pets are similar to what
Speaker 3: humans get.
Speaker 5: I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker 6: I do know that dogs can get arthritis and joint
Speaker 6: pain and so, but I would imagine that a bulls
Speaker 6: eye rash might be a little bit more difficult to
Speaker 6: detect in a pet, but I would imagine that a
Speaker 6: lot of the symptoms, the acute symptoms would be pretty similar.
Speaker 3: Okay, now what about that rash? I have a hard
Speaker 3: time pronouncing. First time question asker Donnie Wald asks why
Speaker 3: does the rash look like a bullseye? Why do some
Speaker 3: infected people not develop the bulls eye rash?
Speaker 5: ARETHEMA migrants?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I new I would say that wrong. Why exactly does
Speaker 3: that happen? And does that happen on? Like if a
Speaker 3: raccoon gets lime diseased under its fur, does it have
Speaker 3: a target logo bulls irash.
Speaker 5: It has to do with the immune response.
Speaker 6: So basically, there's an local inflammation that happens and it
Speaker 6: sort of spreads out. I'm not quite sure why the
Speaker 6: white ring forms, but it has to do with that
Speaker 6: that local as like the immune system is recruited to
Speaker 6: that local site.
Speaker 5: Is what causes that distinctive rap.
Speaker 3: Kristin Long wants to note this feels like a stupid question,
Speaker 3: She says, but is it possible to get lime disease
Speaker 3: without a tick bite or all cases related to tick exposure.
Speaker 3: Like I've heard that maybe mosquitoes can transmit it, but
Speaker 3: I didn't know if that was flim flam.
Speaker 6: I haven't heard of any other methods of transmission. It's
Speaker 6: possible that, you know, if you're working with it in
Speaker 6: the lab, if you have a culture of it. It's
Speaker 6: plausible that if you get a culture, a live culture
Speaker 6: on your unprotected skin, that you could get infected that way,
Speaker 6: because it does start out as a dermatological infection. And
Speaker 6: so that's why when we work with it in the lab,
Speaker 6: we work under biosafety level two conditions just to make
Speaker 6: sure there's no to minimize the risk of transmission in
Speaker 6: that particular setting. But I think a lot of the
Speaker 6: other methods of transmission are not really really proven ps.
Speaker 3: I was curious what kind of precautions a biosafety level
Speaker 3: two lab had to take, because I instantly envisioned just
Speaker 3: like a bunch of scientists in biohazard suits just talking
Speaker 3: about their weekend in the breakroom. But really it just
Speaker 3: involves lab coats and gloves, face shields as needed, an
Speaker 3: eyewash station in the lab, self closing lockable doors, and
Speaker 3: some biohazard warning signs. All of which are also just
Speaker 3: a great way to keep people out of your cubicle. Probably,
Speaker 3: but yes, getting back to it, other methods of transmissions
Speaker 3: like mosquitoes, she says, are not really proven. Also the
Speaker 3: question all of us want to ask but feel like
Speaker 3: people Beatrice Rumford wants to know. Is it okay to
Speaker 3: kill ticks because they are disease vectors? Or do they
Speaker 3: play an important ecological role and I should just let
Speaker 3: them live their lives.
Speaker 6: I say that you should probably kill anything that you
Speaker 6: come across. That's totally fine. I mean the ecological role.
Speaker 5: I'm sure there are animals that eat them. They probably
Speaker 5: play a role.
Speaker 6: They might actually play an important role in sort of
Speaker 6: population regulation, in terms of keeping certain populations that are
Speaker 6: really abundant. If they have high tick burdens, it might
Speaker 6: actually slow down. So there might play an ecological role,
Speaker 6: but I would say it's a minimal one. If you
Speaker 6: find a tick and kill it.
Speaker 4: Okay, is it best? What's the best way to kill it?
Speaker 4: Just smush it with a rock?
Speaker 1: Huh?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean the way we do it is we
Speaker 5: put them in ethanol.
Speaker 6: I think if you were at home, you could probably
Speaker 6: put it in scotch or something.
Speaker 3: That you have lying around, maybe not your best Scotch
Speaker 3: put it in like, yeah, not the age some Gilby's
Speaker 3: gin from a plastic bottle.
Speaker 5: Let's see.
Speaker 3: Crystal Mendoza has some questions, says, what is up with
Speaker 3: Himiphysalis longe purnis And how scared should we be fully
Speaker 3: freaking out about it?
Speaker 5: Is that bad?
Speaker 3: And she says sorry for the multiple questions, but I
Speaker 3: work in a tickborn virus lab, so she also does
Speaker 3: tickborn work, So how scared.
Speaker 4: Should we be with hey, mafia salas as long as.
Speaker 5: So humo phi Sylus longic cornas humor Phisylus longic.
Speaker 3: Cornas aka the longhorn tick.
Speaker 6: This is a invasive tick that was just picked up
Speaker 6: recently on the East coast. It's sort of spreading. I
Speaker 6: have to say, it's a little it's a little concerning,
Speaker 6: you know, it's spreading pretty rapidly. Control pretty much. I
Speaker 6: know a lot of people that are working on the species,
Speaker 6: and it's really hard to control tick populations, you know.
Speaker 6: It's it's really difficult to do that because they just
Speaker 6: are not like even like mosquitoes, where you can go
Speaker 6: after the water body breeding sites or anything like that.
Speaker 6: They're just all over the environment. And this particular species
Speaker 6: can actually undergo parthenogenesis, so it can clone itself and
Speaker 6: so it doesn't even need a male tick to you know,
Speaker 6: complete its life cycle. So I don't know if that
Speaker 6: means that it can reproduce faster or not, but it
Speaker 6: probably does because I think one of the limiting factors
Speaker 6: for other ticks is that they have to meet each
Speaker 6: other on a host like a deer. That's that's sort
Speaker 6: of the tick hookup spot. I know, the males will
Speaker 6: hang out there and wait for the females with me, please.
Speaker 6: The males aren't there for the blood meal, because they
Speaker 6: don't take a blood meal. They just are there for
Speaker 6: the females and then they'll breed on the host. So
Speaker 6: for this invasive tick species, they don't need that, and
Speaker 6: so potentially their their populations could be could sort of
Speaker 6: expand at a much higher rate. So I'm a little concerned,
Speaker 6: and I'm not someone that sort of goes to that
Speaker 6: emotion very quickly, and so it's a little bit scary
Speaker 6: that it's here now and it's spreading and we don't
Speaker 6: know how to control it.
Speaker 5: Yikes.
Speaker 4: And what's the scariest disease it might have.
Speaker 6: I know it has carries a disease in Asia, where
Speaker 6: it's from, but I don't think that pathogen has been
Speaker 6: picked up here yet. Cool, but I can't remember the name.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this longhorn tick can spread. According to my
Speaker 3: friend Wikipardia lime spira, keets spotted fever, Aerolictia chaffansti, Russian
Speaker 3: spring summer encephalitis, powasin virus, cass and virus, tickborn encephalitis virus,
Speaker 3: Japanese spotted fever. But the one I think she was
Speaker 3: referencing was the not at all catchy sounding SFTS or
Speaker 3: severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome, which in northeast and central
Speaker 3: China has a fatality rate of up to thirty percent
Speaker 3: thirty percent. Now, so far, none of the long hornticks
Speaker 3: found in the US have tested positive for these diseases,
Speaker 3: but the fact that they just showed up and are
Speaker 3: spreading is freaking people all the way out, to put
Speaker 3: it scientifically, so welcome to my shit list, longhorned tick.
Speaker 4: You deserve to be here.
Speaker 3: Christina Meers says, I live in a rural area and
Speaker 3: although folks have kept poultry for various reasons forever more
Speaker 3: and where I hear about how great they are at
Speaker 3: controlling tick population. So I'm wondering if any one domestic
Speaker 3: bird species is better than the rest, like ducks, chickens, guineas,
Speaker 3: or should we just work on domesticating possums instead, which
Speaker 3: is an idea that I love.
Speaker 6: I would think that chickens would be pretty good. I
Speaker 6: think a lot of the tick populations will not be
Speaker 6: particularly high in a backyard setting, you know, because they
Speaker 6: do need all of those different host species to complete
Speaker 6: their life cycle, so they're not going to be able
Speaker 6: to They shouldn't be very abundant in your backyard anyway,
Speaker 6: But couldn't hurt to have some chickens. I think they would.
Speaker 6: They would probably do an okay job. But yeah, heard
Speaker 6: of that as a control measure. But maybe you could
Speaker 6: create a little perimeter.
Speaker 5: The chickens, just a chicken patch.
Speaker 3: Dan Starrett wants to know is it true that ticks
Speaker 3: can survive in sub zero temperatures and then when brought
Speaker 3: back to room temperature, they can continue on with their
Speaker 3: life as if nothing happened, sort of like Walt Disney's
Speaker 3: wish Okay ber Bye, Is that true.
Speaker 4: Can you freeze them and then they pop back?
Speaker 6: They can, I mean for short periods of time. They
Speaker 6: couldn't do it for very long. They're much more humidity
Speaker 6: sensitive than they are temperature sensitive, so they can tolerate
Speaker 6: a wide range of temperatures as long as they have
Speaker 6: the right humidity. They probably couldn't live in a freezer
Speaker 6: for very long, but you could probably put them in
Speaker 6: there for you know, maybe up to a day, half
Speaker 6: a day, I don't know, and they might still be
Speaker 6: alive afterwards, especially the adults, they can be a little heartier.
Speaker 5: Don't advocate these sort of experiments at home.
Speaker 3: And one last patroon question one paid Ro Martinez wants
Speaker 3: to know how does the tick affect the deer? An
Speaker 3: if you eat deer meat, can you get lime from it?
Speaker 5: So that's a really good question.
Speaker 6: We don't really know how how an if deer are
Speaker 6: affected by the pathogen. There's the evidence of it is
Speaker 6: that the deer actually are not really good reservoirs. They
Speaker 6: don't maintain an infection. They may actually fight off the infection,
Speaker 6: similar to how lizards do that. But there are you know,
Speaker 6: there aren't a lot of studies that have really dived
Speaker 6: into this with deer just because they're kind of hard
Speaker 6: to work with. But the evidence is that they actually
Speaker 6: are probably not a really important source of infection for
Speaker 6: the tick population and probably are able to fight it off.
Speaker 3: Wow. Okay, so I look this up and again, according
Speaker 3: to the CDC, you will not get lime disease from
Speaker 3: eating venison or squirrel meat. And now, last two questions
Speaker 3: that I always ask are what is one thing that's
Speaker 3: just the worst about what you do anything?
Speaker 6: So I have a couple of things that really suck.
Speaker 6: Probably the worst is poison oak. So doing field work
Speaker 6: the poison oak in California is a big hazard. You know,
Speaker 6: people can get really.
Speaker 5: Sensitive to it.
Speaker 6: I've had students go to the hospital because of their
Speaker 6: reaction to it. And that's where the ticks like to be,
Speaker 6: right underneath that poison oak. And so you know, sometimes
Speaker 6: if we're sampling, we have.
Speaker 5: To go through it. You just have to dive in and.
Speaker 6: Pray, pray for the best. The other thing that is
Speaker 6: really unpleasant is with trapping small mammals. Sometimes predators will
Speaker 6: find the traps and then they leave us a nice
Speaker 6: juicy dismembered body or something like that. And so that's
Speaker 6: that's pretty unpleasant as well.
Speaker 3: And now usually when you're if you're sampling a little rodent,
Speaker 3: are you able to sample it and let it out
Speaker 3: or do you have to take it into the lab
Speaker 3: with you and it's game over for the little mouse?
Speaker 5: Oh nos.
Speaker 6: Most of the animals we sample in the field, we
Speaker 6: process them in the field and release them. Oh nice,
Speaker 6: So we're yeah, so we're really interested in sort of
Speaker 6: how it's maintained in natural populations.
Speaker 5: And so this way we can go.
Speaker 6: Back year after year, you know, we know, you know,
Speaker 6: oh this is a two five nine to one. We
Speaker 6: caught him last year and he was infected. Is he
Speaker 6: infected this year? And so we can look at those
Speaker 6: long term population trends with this sort of data.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 3: So they're like, oh, yes, it's peanut butter oats season.
Speaker 3: They're like, I remember, this is delicious. There might maybe
Speaker 3: not the mice that learn super fast.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, they are not trap averse.
Speaker 6: There are some species that you really have to coax
Speaker 6: them in. This is why it's really hard to work
Speaker 6: on Western gray squirrels, which are also a potential reservoir
Speaker 6: or they are a reservoir of lime disease in California,
Speaker 6: but we could not get them into our traps. They
Speaker 6: just or you know, they stay away. But a lot
Speaker 6: of the other are the mice and the wood rat.
Speaker 6: They're happy to spend a night in our little peanut
Speaker 6: butter hotel, and so we have no problems coaxing them in.
Speaker 3: I would stay in that hotel easily if it was
Speaker 3: just filled with peanut butter opalls. It'd be like check, yeah,
Speaker 3: Pierce my ear, I'm exactly see you next year. And
Speaker 3: then what is your favorite thing about what you do
Speaker 3: and about science or about working with tickboard illnesses?
Speaker 5: Honestly all of it. I mean, I just love like
Speaker 5: every aspect of it.
Speaker 6: And unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to
Speaker 6: do it myself these days, and so you know, when
Speaker 6: I do do have more time, it's just I'm thrilled,
Speaker 6: you know. I get to go into the field and
Speaker 6: I get to work with my students and catch animals
Speaker 6: and bring the ticks back. And I love looking at
Speaker 6: stuff under the microscope still, so whether it's the bacteria
Speaker 6: or the ticks themselves.
Speaker 5: You know, we collect thousands of.
Speaker 6: Ticks and every single one has to be identified, you know,
Speaker 6: I get a lot of help from my students who
Speaker 6: do a lot of that work, but I love to
Speaker 6: get under there as well, under the microscope and see
Speaker 6: what we found. And you know, they are really intricate
Speaker 6: and interesting when you look at them under nine hundred X.
Speaker 3: Do you have a microscope at home too, just for funzis?
Speaker 6: I have a really crappy one that's like a kid
Speaker 6: toy one, but I've been toying with the idea of
Speaker 6: bringing home a better one, just because there's lots of
Speaker 6: fun stuff to see at home too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was thinking, like, there's so many people that have
Speaker 3: like a record player at home for vinyl, which is great,
Speaker 3: but I feel like if everyone had a microscope at home,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like just unlimited entertainment, you know, especially
Speaker 3: if your Netflix is down or something, you just put
Speaker 3: anything under there.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I totally agree. In fact, I'm going to
Speaker 5: bring a microscope home.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for talking to me over Skype.
Speaker 3: I turned off the air conditioning in my house because
Speaker 3: it was too loud, and I'm sorry, I'm just melting
Speaker 3: like a candle and I'm not much to look at.
Speaker 4: But thank you for being so patient.
Speaker 5: Of course, this is so fun.
Speaker 3: Say hi to the ticks, and by hi, I mean
Speaker 3: tell them I hate them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll put them in methan off for you.
Speaker 3: So maybe treat yourself or a loved one to an
Speaker 3: affordable microscope and ask smart people stupid questions because it
Speaker 3: just might save your body the trouble of fighting off
Speaker 3: something nasty and you the trouble of having to crowdfund
Speaker 3: medical treatment. So more info on doctor Andrea Sway's work
Speaker 3: is at Sway lab dot com Swei lab dot com.
Speaker 3: You can keep up to date with her science badassery
Speaker 3: on Twitter at Sway Lab or at Andrea Sway. I'm
Speaker 3: going to put links to those in the show notes,
Speaker 3: as well as sponsor links, the nonprofit links and more
Speaker 3: links and info is always up at aliward dot com,
Speaker 3: slash ologies, it'll be aliword dot com, slash Ologies, slash
Speaker 3: disease Ecology. I am on Twitter and Instagram at Ali
Speaker 3: Ward with one L. The show is on both at ologies.
Speaker 4: You can say hi.
Speaker 3: You can tag your merch photos with hashtag ologies merch
Speaker 3: or artwork at hashtag Ology's art I love to see
Speaker 3: and repost him. Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com
Speaker 3: Thank you to sister Shannon Feltus and Bonnie Dutch for
Speaker 3: managing that and do you check out their brand new
Speaker 3: podcast You Are That.
Speaker 4: New episodes drop on Mondays. The first episode last week featured.
Speaker 3: Melotologist Amanda Shaw and it was a goddamn delight. Thank
Speaker 3: you to Aaron Talbert and Hannahlippo You Wonderful Beings for
Speaker 3: admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Thanks to everyone who
Speaker 3: signed up on patreon dot com slash Ologies. Thank you
Speaker 3: to the very handsome Jared Sleeper of mind gam Media
Speaker 3: and the podcast My Good Bad Brain. He also has
Speaker 3: a martial arts podcast, Fight Stuff. He helps with assistant
Speaker 3: editing and helped me move last week amid a very
Speaker 3: busy month. You were amazing and of course huge thanks
Speaker 3: to editor Stephen Ray Morris, who hosts the per cast
Speaker 3: about Kiddies and c Jurassic Right, which is about Dino's
Speaker 3: He stitches us all together each week always saves the day.
Speaker 3: The theme song was written and performed by Nick Thorburn
Speaker 3: of the band Islands And if you listen to the
Speaker 3: end of the show, you know I tell you a secret.
Speaker 3: And this week I realized that when I turned my
Speaker 3: phone to airplane mode, I get approximately one million percent
Speaker 3: more work done. So thank you to Jared Sleeper for
Speaker 3: that suggestion. He was like, why don't you just turn
Speaker 3: your phone on airplane mode? And I was like, that's
Speaker 3: not gonna work. And then I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: I got so much done. How is this possible? I
Speaker 3: need a brain ologist to explain what happens when brain
Speaker 3: thoughts are interrupted and why it takes so long to
Speaker 3: get back on track. Also, if I'm slow to return
Speaker 3: anyone's texts, please know it's just because I'm busy getting
Speaker 3: a chess tattoo that says airplane motor die in very
Speaker 3: ornate font. Okay, remember check those crevices, my wonderful friends
Speaker 3: and ticks. If you're listening, I respect your very effective
Speaker 3: life cycles, your thousands of children and one go. I
Speaker 3: think your knive mouths are amazing. Your thirst for horror
Speaker 3: is just so edgy. But still I fucking hate you
Speaker 3: so much to leave my bathing suit areas alone. Okay,
Speaker 3: have fun out there. Check your crevices, per pie pacodermatology,
Speaker 3: hobbiology or doo zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, mettology, menthology, zeriology, eldology,
Speaker 3: I got