Opinion: I’m a tick biologist whose body seems to kill off ticks
Sometimes people call me “the tick guy,” but I’m a mammal guy by training. Although I respect ticks, I don’t fear them, especially after developing an immunity that kills them when they try to bite me.
Back in 1991 I joined some colleagues at the Cary Institute in New York on a project devoted to understanding the responses by eastern deciduous forests in the United States to stress and damage. One of the biggest sources of stress and damage is defoliation of oaks and other trees by the spongy moth (formerly called the gypsy moth). Moth caterpillars at outbreak levels can strip millions of trees of their leaves in the height of the growing season, but these outbreaks are sporadic or cyclic; most years spongy moths are sparse and do no visible damage.
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