The Sensory Physiology of the Sheep Tick, <i>Ixodes Ricinus</i> L

TLDR

Tick sensory perception has been studied across several species, yet literature remains fragmented and ecological context was poorly understood at the time of early investigations. This study aimed to examine the orienting reactions of the sheep tick to natural stimuli and to clarify the role of its special senses. Researchers first observed a population of active sheep ticks in the field for several weeks to inform laboratory experiments. Field observations guided the study and helped interpret laboratory reactions, suggesting new lines of investigation.

Abstract

ABSTRACT The sensory perceptions of several species of ticks, notably Argas persicus (Hindle &amp; Merriman, 1912), Boophilus annulatus and Rhipicephalus sanguineus (Krijgsman, 1937), Ixodes ricinus (Totze, 1933) and I. persulcatus (Mironov, 1939), have been studied systematically in the laboratory. There are, in addition, many scattered references in the literature to the behaviour of ticks and some incomplete descriptions of their sense organs. The chief aim of the present work has been to investigate the orienting reactions of the sheep tick, and the role of the special senses, in relation particularly to those stimuli the tick will encounter in its natural environment. With such an object in view, a knowledge of the ecology and behaviour is clearly a desirable, if not an essential, starting-point. There was little understanding of these subjects at the time Totze was writing and, in consequence, there was a tendency for the laboratory observations to lack meaning or to acquire a distorted significance. A fresh examination of the sensory physiology is justified by the increased knowledge of the ecology of the sheep tick in Britain, a subject which has been studied intensively from 1932 onwards. As a preliminary to the present work some weeks were spent observing the behaviour of a population of active ticks under natural conditions. These observations proved of value both by suggesting lines of investigation and, finally, in attempting an interpretation of the significance of the reactions observed in the laboratory.