Bad Roommates: Study Tracks Mice to Nests, Finds Ticks Aplenty

Noted: Susan Paskewitz, Ph.D., professor and chair of the of the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and senior author on the study, says checking out mouse nests was a logical choice. “We were developing an agent-based model that explored mouse behavior and blacklegged tick numbers on the mice,” says Paskewitz, who conducted the research alongside Wisconsin graduate students Ryan Larson and Tela Zembsch and research associates Xia Lee, Ph.D., and Gebbiena Bron, Ph.D. “The model suggested that mice spend so much time in nests during the day that ticks should be detaching and ending up in that environment at greater rates than we had suspected. So, we decided to look in nests, which turned out to be more difficult than you might imagine.”