Chiggers On Your Legs? Nope. Those Are Lone Star Tick Larvae

Despite what people with itchy red legs covered in bites say, there are no chiggers on Long Island. According to Scott Campbell, Ph.d., the chief of the Arthropod-Borne Disease Lab of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, people who think they stepped into chiggers actually were bitten by lone star tick larvae, which number in the hundreds or thousands per clutch.

The larvae do not carry the same pathogens as lone star tick nymphs and adults often do, but they can cause the people who they bite to develop a red meat allergy. Late summer is the time of year on the East End when the larvae hatch from eggs — chiggers are active year-round in the South — so now is when false reports of chigger bites are expected to skyrocket.

“Larvae can be everywhere, and you just really have to be very careful at this time of the year to be exposed to larvae,” Dr. Campbell said.

A number of precautions can be taken to reduce tick populations and prevent bites both at home and while out enjoying nature.

Chiggers is a term for mites found down South that leave bites similar to lone star tick bites, Dr. Campbell explained. Lone star tick larvae are between half a millimeter and 1 millimeter in length and have six legs, like chiggers do, while tick nymphs and adults have eight legs.

“There are some people that are convinced that they’re chiggers,” he said. “I’ve been here since 1991, and I’ve never come across chiggers. … I’ve looked at thousands of samples throughout the years of people bringing me what they thought were chiggers. All of them have been larval lone star tick bites.”

Larval dog ticks do not attach to humans — the larvae are specific to rodents — but larval black-legged ticks, also known as deer ticks, will. However, they don’t give the itchy red bite that lone star tick larvae do, and black-legged ticks lay fewer eggs, so there are fewer bites from larvae.

Lone star tick larvae have a reddish hue to them, a rusty red, unlike black-legged tick larvae, which are gray, and unlike red mites, which are very red, Dr. Campbell said.

“They are very small and they come from an egg mass, and lone star ticks can lay thousands of eggs,” he said.

When people walk through a hatching clutch of eggs, they are bitten by dozens if not hundreds of larvae. The larvae feed for about a day, then they drop off. “Oftentimes, people don’t realize they’re being fed upon until they’ve already dropped off, and what you’re left with are these red, itchy bites, and that’s very distinctive of lone star tick bites,” Dr. Campbell said. “They’re very, very itchy.”

Typically, long star tick bites are found on ankles or legs up to the waist, because tick larvae don’t move much, but they can end up anywhere on the body if someone has been down on the ground on the leaf litter where clutches are found, he said.

Animals that go through a clutch disperse them elsewhere as the larvae get their blood meal and drop off. Nymphs are not concentrated the way larvae are.

“When you’re bitten by a nymph, you’re not bitten by hundreds or thousands of them. You’re only bitten by a couple or one or two,” Dr. Campbell said.

Lone star ticks have a two-year life cycle, so the larvae that emerge this summer will feed then overwinter and emerge in spring as nymphs. The nymphs feed, overwinter, and emerge the following year as adults. The cohorts overlap, so in the spring both nymphs and adults are active, and in the summer larvae are active.

Lone star tick larvae and nymphs are sexless, while the adults are either male or female. A male attaches to a host and only sticks around long enough to mate. A female attaches to a host for seven days before it has had its fill and drops off to lay eggs, Dr. Campbell said.

Lone star ticks were found in Montauk between the 1950s and 1970s, and Dr. Campbell has seen them with regularity since the mid-1990s, he said. They probably got to Long Island via migrating birds, he added, and then the lone star tick population grew as the deer population grew and moved west as deer have.

“The good thing about larvae is they don’t really have any pathogens that we know of,” Dr. Campbell said.

It’s only when larvae have their first blood meal that they can catch a pathogen from the host animal. Later, as a nymph or adult, infected ticks will transmit the pathogen to future hosts.

However, lone star tick larvae bites can give the host an alpha gal meat allergy.

“Exposure to the saliva causes a sensitivity to meat. … It has to do with the person’s immune system, and how often they’re bitten,” Dr. Campbell explained.

Because larvae bite in far greater numbers than nymphs and adults, the larvae are more likely to give a person the allergy.

“It’s just a numbers game,” he said. “The more you get bitten, you are increasing the likelihood of potentially developing alpha gal meat allergy.”

The ticks transmit the alpha gal sugar molecule to the person they bite, and the person’s immune system creates antibodies against it. Eating red meat or using products created from mammals triggers an immune response, and creates more antibodies. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the reaction comes three to six hours after exposure, and symptoms include rash, hives, difficulty breathing, drop in blood pressure, dizziness, nausea and severe stomach pain.

It is not a lifelong allergy. “The antibodies will start to decrease as long as you are not exposed to alpha gal,” Dr. Campbell explained. That means avoiding further bites and also avoiding red meat, so the body stops producing more alpha gal antibodies.

It takes one to two years for that sensitivity to decrease.

To stop lone star tick larvae bites, a barrier is needed: Either clothing, or a chemical repellent.

Dr. Campbell suggests long pants and two pairs of socks. Put on long socks with the pants over them, then put on the second pair of socks with the pantlegs tucked into them.

“They can get through an open weave sock, and they can still bite you,” Dr. Campbell warned. “People do get bitten with only one sock that has an open weave to it.”

A chemical barrier can be sprayed on clothing — to form a double barrier — or some chemical repellents can be applied directly to skin. Natural repellents are not as effective and don’t last as long, he advised.

“DEET is a very good repellent, and that can be used on clothing or skin,” he said. “Permethrin is also a very good repellent, but that can only be used on clothing.”

When it dries, permethrin binds to the clothing it is sprayed on. It remains on the clothing through six washes before it needs to be reapplied, he said.

“When you come home, you take your clothing off and you throw it right in the dryer. You don’t want to wash it. You don’t want to throw it in a hamper. You don’t want to leave it laying around, because the ticks will come off of it.”

He noted that ticks will live only hours in a house before dying, because houses are too dry for them.

He also emphasized the importance of tick checks, not only when entering the house or later that night, but also the following morning, when ticks that were overlooked the first time have attached and are easier to detect.

Larvae on clothing or skin can be removed with shipping tape or a lint roller.

Lone star ticks will be anywhere deer are, and they tend to drop off deer as deer lay down to rest or stop to feed on vegetation, Dr. Campbell said, advising homeowners to use deer fences and deer-resistant plantings to keep deer off property.

Ticks are typically found in shady areas near property edges where lawns meet up with wooded areas or anywhere animal activity is found. Because ticks prefer moist environments, it is best to keep a property on the dry side. Brush piles or woodpiles on the ground where rodents live should be removed.

Ticks will eventually die if they don’t eat, Dr. Campbell pointed out. Keeping animals out — and keeping humans away from tick-prone areas — will fatally deprive ticks of food.

Rather than spraying an entire property with pesticides — which can kill a wide variety of species, including pollinators and other beneficial insects — Dr. Campbell recommends spraying only where ticks are found. Ticks can be detected through “flagging,” putting a white cloth on a poll and dragging it across the ground. Then check the cloth to see if ticks are crawling on it, and move on to another area to test.

Dr. Campbell said the CDC does not recommend saving ticks for testing because the tick that actually caused an illness could have been another tick that was never noticed between attaching and dropping off.

He also does not recommend backyard chickens or other birds for tick control. He said that there is no evidence that keeping chickens or guinea hens reduces the tick population, and said birds may be feeding more ticks than they are eating.