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Smithsonian Preserves the World's Ticks
Yahoo! ^ | Monday, March 24, 2003 | DANIEL YEE, Associated Press Writer

Posted on 03/24/2003 5:30:26 PM PST by Willie Green

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

STATESBORO, Ga. - Like a tiny gilded menagerie, 3,000 gold-covered ticks stand upright in active positions on dime-sized platforms. Nearby is one of the most complete repositories of written knowledge on the tick, dating back to Homer, 800 B.C.

Hundreds of thousands more of the bloodsucking creatures are tucked away in government-issue metal filing cabinets.

The Smithsonian's little-known U.S. National Tick Collection is stored in a former home-economics demonstration house at Georgia Southern University. The collection's curators, the world's foremost authorities of tick identification, are in charge of more than 1 million dead ticks that represent more than 700 of the 850 known species.

"It's an important historical document; you never know when a new outbreak of disease will occur," curator James Keirans said. "Ticks transmit more disease to man and animals than any other arthropod and are second only to mosquitoes in pathogenic agents to humans."

Finding Earth's remaining ticks is an increasingly difficult challenge.

"There's not many more to be found," Keirans said. "We ID ticks for practically everybody; this is the only place where you can get ticks identified from anywhere in the world."

The collection, touted as the world's largest, spans nearly a century to America's first encounters with tick-borne Rocky Mountain spotted fever in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana. First created by Montana state researchers, the tick collection and research lab in Hamilton, Mont., was taken over in 1932 by the government's National Institutes of Health.

By 1983, the collection had to make way for a new NIH priority: AIDS research. Because the collection was government-owned, it was offered to the Smithsonian.

But even the Smithsonian's diverse curators weren't sure what to do with the world's tick compendium, which remained at an off-Mall location for seven years. Keirans and James Oliver Jr., director of the university's Institute of Arthropodology and Parasitology since 1983, proposed moving the collection to Georgia Southern. Smithsonian officials readily agreed.

The collection remains at the university as a long-term loan. The Smithsonian provides materials such as glass jars to maintain the collection. The university provides the building and the curator's salary.

Collection officials identify ticks for doctors, graduate students and museums — often on memory alone.

"With a group of 850 (species), you can keep most of the information in your head," Keirans said.

But describing a new species for the scientific world requires exquisite detail. Some ticks they coat in gold to scan with an electron microscope. Without the coating, the electron field around ticks can blur the image.

The Field Museum in Chicago recently sent Keirans 90 vials of ticks from expeditions exploring animals and insects of Peru's Manu National Park.

"It's an extraordinary resource," said Bruce Patterson, the museum's curator of mammals. "We can be assured that not only can these things be compared to the most complete reference collection on the planet but it can be evaluated by one of the best eyes and most trained" tick experts.

"There's no single specialist like Jim Keirans," Patterson added. "If only we had a National Chigger Collection."

Despite Keirans' reputation, there are worries about the future of tick identification, as there are few taxonomists who can do what he does.

"Unfortunately, a lot of people good with ticks or tick identification are getting very old," Oliver said. "Most of the young people are not getting trained in it; they're getting trained in molecular biology, that's where the fellowships are. It is a serious problem."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: chiggers; cooties; fleas; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; lice; louse; originofclothing; smithsonian; ticks

1 posted on 03/24/2003 5:30:27 PM PST by Willie Green
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To: Willie Green
Interesting that Georgia Southern would be interested in ticks as the worst bloodsucker I ever new came from Statesboro, GA. I don't know where she is now.
2 posted on 03/24/2003 5:33:48 PM PST by Conan the Librarian
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To: Willie Green
How appropriate. The Smithsonian has been sucking blood from the taxpayers for years. I say this as a long time member of the organization. This is money wasted just as that thrown away on PBS.
3 posted on 03/24/2003 5:34:57 PM PST by FreePaul
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To: Willie Green
"The Tick"


4 posted on 03/24/2003 5:36:19 PM PST by saluki_in_ohio (Gun control is the ability to hit your target!)
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To: Willie Green
WHO GIVES A TICK
5 posted on 03/24/2003 7:36:43 PM PST by DD938 (God Bless America & Great Britian ( an old Navy veteran))
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; 31R1O; ...
Note: this topic is from 03/24/2003 and posted by FR's legendary nutbar, Willie Green .

6 posted on 11/26/2018 7:19:18 PM PST by SunkenCiv (and btw -- https://www.gofundme.com/for-rotator-cuff-repair-surgery)
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To: Willie Green

Choo choo!!!


7 posted on 11/26/2018 7:55:56 PM PST by Uncle Miltie (XY)
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8 posted on 11/26/2018 7:56:28 PM PST by SunkenCiv (and btw -- https://www.gofundme.com/for-rotator-cuff-repair-surgery)
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To: SunkenCiv

The Smithsonian also has a collection of plants. One is Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides).

The plant is perhaps the most successful. The range extends un interrupted from coastal Virginia to southern Argentina. The Smithsonian collection specimen representing the northern most extreme was collected by me at First Landing State Park at the mouth of the Chesapeke Bay. .


9 posted on 11/27/2018 6:18:50 AM PST by bert (to them (KE. N.P. N.C. +12) Invade Honduras. Provide a military government)
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To: bert

Nice!


10 posted on 11/27/2018 10:02:02 AM PST by SunkenCiv (and btw -- https://www.gofundme.com/for-rotator-cuff-repair-surgery)
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To: saluki_in_ohio

The only good tick is a blue tick!


11 posted on 11/27/2018 10:03:34 AM PST by mewzilla (Is Central America emptying its prisons?)
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