(Elizabeth Di Filippo/ Yahoo News) — Tick season has officially arrived in Canada.
Ticks thrive in temperatures 4°C and higher, but they have been shown to survive in colder climates. With warm weather on the horizon, the risk of contracting a tick bite is higher, as black-legged ticks are most active in the spring.
Ticks season falls between April and June and peaks again in September through November, according to Vett Lloyd, a researcher and director of the Lloyd Tick Lab at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.
In a 2022 interview with The Canadian Press, Lloyd said, “ticks are surviving better, and they have more time to feed and have a tick romance,” thanks to milder and shorter winters.
While the risk of contracting Lyme disease from ticks is low, Canada has seen a steep rise in reported Lyme disease cases in recent years.
Between 2020 and 2021, the number of reported Lyme disease cases increased by 150 per cent — however, that number could be even higher since some cases may be “undetected” or “unreported” to the federal government. (…)