The biggest number of winter ticks that Peter J. Pekins ever found on a moose was about 100,000. Longer-lasting warm weather gives ticks a leg up as they glom onto moose, their preferred hosts, in the fall. ( Jonathan Hayward / THE CANADIAN PRESS )Between 2014 and 2016, Pekins counted ticks on moose calves at two locations in New Hampshire and Maine. He wanted to see how the moose were faring, given that climate change has been delaying snow’s arrival in New England’s winters. “That’s the host-parasite relationship.” That relationship was more or less in balance until the changing climate tilted the scales in the ticks’ favor.

Source: thestar October 18, 2018 23:57 UTC