Researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have discovered a new bacteria in rabbit ticks in Maine that’s related to the spotted fever pathogen.
Microbiology professor Stephen Rich, who is also executive director of the New England Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases, said the bacteria was discovered in rabbit ticks from a residential backyard.
The finding prompted researchers, in collaboration with the University of Maine, to test more rabbit ticks. Out of nearly 300 collected from nine counties, 6 percent tested positive for the pathogen.
Rich said that’s “not a needle in a haystack,” but he notes rabbit ticks don’t typically feed on humans and pets.
“Our concern is that it stay that way, that it stay rare and in rabbit ticks and that it not spill over into black-legged ticks or deer ticks or other things that more frequently feed on people,” Rich said.
Megan Porter, a health educator with the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the threat to public health is low.
She said there have been 34 cases of spotted fever rickettsiosis in Maine between 2014-2024, which is also transmitted by dog ticks.
“Almost every time, we can trace those to people who have traveled out of state to a place that has those germs in the tick populations,” Porter said. “And then they’re either going to get bitten by a tick there, or they bring the tick back with them and it bites them and they get sick once they’re back in Maine.”
Porter said the Maine CDC will continue to monitor for the disease. UMass Amherst scientists plan to conduct further research to see whether the new bacteria strain is elsewhere in New England.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
