The science ticket. Ticks carrying Lyme disease bacteria are more numerous in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté – Insurance for Pets

Ticks are present in the eastern and central parts of France, Alsace, Franche-Comté, the Alps, also in Limousin and Poitou-Charentes. INRAE ​​has even detailed the dangerousness of these ticks depending on the region.

Not all ticks carry the Lyme disease bacteria. Result on thousands of ticks studied, it is found that in Burgundy-Franche-Comté, nearly one in two is a carrier of a pathogen, including Lyme. One in three in Hauts-de-France, New Aquitaine or Île-de-France. On the other hand, only one tick in five is infected by a disease in Brittany, Normandy and in Pays-de-la-Loire.

You find them in woods, forests, tall grass, meadows. A Swiss study has established a link with one type of tree, with beech. The more beech trees there are, the more ticks that carry Lyme disease bacteria are present. So ticks mostly in these places of vegetation « Savage » it will be said, but also, and this is more surprising, you can quite simply find it in your garden, if you have one. It’s fairly recent, last year, during the first lockdown, tick counts were more important in private gardens, perhaps also because the French spent more time there than usual. For example, in Nancy, during an experiment, almost half of the bites declared at the time actually occurred in gardens.

The researchers say they have spotted a lot of ticks on Californian beaches but when we look at their study in detail, it is rather near the beaches in what is called « the coastal chaparral » a kind of scrubland that they are. find. Indeed, in France. ticks are also found not in the sand on the beaches, but in the coastal grasses and shrubs of the Mediterranean or Brittany for example, even if it is less frequent than in the forests.