Know Your Vector: The Tick’s Life Cycle (2024)

If you’ve ever encountered a tick, then you’ve probably wondered how to prevent tick encounters in the future. To answer these questions, a basic understanding of the tick’s life cycle is important. By knowing when each tick life stage is active, you can avoid tick bites and potential tick-borne diseases.

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- In order to prevent tick bites or control ticks effectively, it's important to understand their biology and behavior.

In this video, we will discuss the tick lifecycle, their life stages, and the seasonality of each stage.

Different ticks have different life cycles, but here, we'll be focusing on the blacklegged tick, also known as a deer tick.

This tick can transmit the pathogen that causes Lyme disease, Powassan virus disease, and anaplasmosis, among others.

The blacklegged tick is a three-host tick, which means that the tick will need to feed on three different hosts, one for each mobile life stage throughout the lifecycle.

Ticks have four life stages, egg, larva, nymph, and adult.

Larvae will be the only life stage with six legs, and they are generally not infected with pathogens.

Nymphs and adults will have eight legs and have the potential to be infected with pathogens if the larval or nymphal stage feeds on a host with pathogens respectively.

Nymphs are typically the size of a poppy seed, while adults are about the size of a sesame seed.

Blacklegged ticks will follow the 2-3-4 rule in that they have a two-year lifecycle, they are three-host ticks, and they have four life stages.

Female ticks will lay eggs in the spring and summer.

Ticks need a blood meal to develop into nymph or adult stages.

So once the eggs hatch, larval ticks will seek a first blood meal from small mammals, such as white-footed mice, or they may take a blood meal from birds.

We are currently in the first year of the tick lifecycle.

The tick has fed on its first host, and the tick is in its second life stage.

After the larvae takes a blood meal, it will detach from the host in overwinter.

The following late spring to summer, these fed larvae will molt into nymphs.

Nymphs will then take a blood meal from small, medium, or large mammals, including dogs and people.

At this point, we are now in year two after completing one full year of the tick's lifecycle.

The tick has fed on its second host, and it is in its third life stage.

During each blood meal, a larval or nymphal tick can be infected with a pathogen if it fed on an infected animal.

The tick can pass a pathogen to a new host, which could be a human or a pet, during the next feeding.

Once the nymph takes a blood meal, it will detach from the host and molt into the adult stage as a male or female tick.

Adult female ticks will then take a blood meal, typically from larger mammals, such as bears, white-tailed deer, foxes, or people.

At the adult stage, we are in the second year of the lifecycle.

The tick has fed on its third host, and it is currently in its fourth life stage.

Males and females may mate on the host as a female is feeding, or they may mate after the female has finished feeding and has left the host, as you can see here with this blood filled tick.

After the female has finished feeding and mating, the female will detach from the host and overwinter in the leaf litter.

Following the second winter, eggs will hatch and restart the tick lifecycle again.

Knowing when each life stage is active will help determine your risk of tick bites and when to conduct tick control.

Depending on the tick species, the peak activity time typically coincides with the hosts that the ticks will feed on.

If you want to control the larval stage, you should aim for the late summer months.

Nymphs will peak during the mid-summer months.

The summer is when many small mammals, birds, and other potential hosts are likely to be active.

Adults are most active during the fall and early spring, which coincides when deer are in close contact with one another.

It should also be noted that tick seasonality will change depending on the tick species since different tick species have different behaviors and host preferences.

So if there is a different species in your area, it is best to learn about the specific biology of that tick.

Tick control plans not only have to be planned when each life stage is most active, but they must be continuous to control all subsequent tick life stages.