With the citic program, Ariège ticks under surveillance

Here is a participatory science exercise: rather than crushing the ticks that have hung on to your skin, take them delicately, so that they can be analyzed by a laboratory … In Ariège, this unusual collection is organized by the PNR and the Naturalists of Ana-Cen.

There are, in the world, some 300 species of ticks, which come to parasitize any vertebrate and transmit pathogens. Yet, “Knowledge of ticks and pathogens conveyed is much less advanced than that of mosquitoes”, Pointe Jocelyn Bordeneuve, from Ana-Cen. We know that they are widespread everywhere in France, especially below 1500 meters above sea level, and that they appreciate softness and humidity. Ariège corresponds well to the definition …

Tick is the vector of diseases whose dangerousness makes this mite a public enemy. Everyone has, of course, in mind Lyme disease due to a bacteria transported by a tick. But the scientific community is starting to pay particular attention to the tick of the genus Hyaloma, an invasive tick whose distribution area is poorly known in France, but which generates significant health risks: piroplasmoses for cattle and equins, and hemorrhagic fever of Crimea-Congo for humans …

Faced with these risks and this insufficient knowledge, the idea emerged to mobilize citizens to help improve science, according to the principles of participatory research: the “citic” program was born. The Ariège Pyrenees Regional Natural Park and Ana-Cen are the ideal relays of this program in Ariège, to disseminate the tools. Starting with the distribution of reporting and sampling kits all over the department: “Town halls, tourist offices, healthcare professionals, veterinarians…” For example are invited to install “boxes” of distribution and collection.

Citizen side? For those who have recovered a kit, it is simple: once the tick s) removed from the skin (with the suitable material, the famous deceased) and the disinfection made, we plunge them into ethanol tube, and the report sheet is informed. In the absence of a kit, we imprison the beast in an absorbent paper taped on the edge, we signal the bite on citic.fr and we register the code obtained on paper.

The rest? We contact Ana-Cen (06 21 41 23 96 or jocelyn.b@ariegenature.fr) for the delivery of ticks, which will then be shipped to the “All Researchers” laboratory of INRAE Grand-Est de Nancy.“All the elements obtained are then shared in open data format”, explains the naturalist. Hence the importance of providing the most complete information at the time of “direct debit”…

A. C.

Where to find the kits?