A summer in the tick trenches
With the help of five Penn undergrads, biology professor Dustin Brisson’s research group collected 9,000 tick specimens this summer to understand how seasonal activity patterns of these arachnids affects human pathogens and what role a changing climate might play.
Over the summer, Professor Dustin Brisson’s lab recruited five Penn undergraduates to help collect roughly 9,000 black‑legged ticks across eight sites in Philadelphia and surrounding areas. Their lab work included DNA extraction and PCR to detect pathogens carried by the ticks, with the long‑term goal of understanding how seasonal activity patterns (at different tick life stages) and environmental variables like temperature and humidity influence pathogen transmission. Read more at Penn Today.