As if life as an orphan wasn’t tough enough, an Albemarle County calf has played host to a tick that heretofore was only found in East Asia, Tonga, Vanuatu and northwestern New Jersey.
Officials with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, confirmed the presence of the East Asian tick, also known as the longhorned tick or Haemaphysalis longicornis, on May 14.
The tick, which has been shown to transmit a variety of diseases in other countries, was found on the calf from an undisclosed beef farm, officials said.
“It does cause diseases in its homeland, and that’s been the concern since it was found last fall in New Jersey,” said Elaine Lidholm, agriculture department spokeswoman. “So far, there has been no direct link between the tick and diseases from the New Jersey study.”
The tick resembles other garden-variety Virginia ticks, making collection important, officials said. They recommend contacting the agriculture department if unusual ticks are seen or a large number of them are found on one animal.
Longhorned ticks are known to be carriers of a variety diseases in their natural habitat, including thrombocytopenia syndrome, which is distinguished by low platelet counts that can cause bleeding and a number of symptoms, including fatigue, fever, chills, headaches, body pain and nausea. The virus sometimes leads to more serious conditions affecting the lymph nodes. In some cases, infections are fatal.
In fact, in some areas of the world, the disease has fatality rates between 12 and 30 percent.
But that disease has not been seen in the New Jersey ticks. The parasites found swarming sheep in Hunterdon County last November carried no disease, foreign or domestic, and New Jersey officials said did their best to eliminate them.
It appears to have been unsuccessful.
“Until that time, this tick was not known to exist in the U.S. How it arrived in New Jersey remains a mystery,” said Jeff Wolfe, of the New Jersey Department of Agriculture. “Ongoing surveillance continued during the winter, and on April 17, the [state agency] confirmed the longhorned tick successfully overwintered in New Jersey and has possibly become established in the state.”
New Jersey officials said there was no known link between the Hunterdon farm and the countries to which the tick is native. How it managed to make it from New Jersey to Virginia also is unknown.
“There is no direct connection between the Albemarle County farm and the New Jersey location,” Lidholm said. “No one visited the area, no one traveled back and forth. And in this case, there was only one tick found, while there were a lot in New Jersey.”
Lidholm said Virginia state veterinary officials will continue to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies to determine the significance of the one tick.
The tick usually is found in East Asia, including Russia, Japan, China, and the Koreas. It’s also found in New Zealand and parts of Australia, as well as Pacific islands like New Caledonia, Fiji, Western Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu.
The longhorned ticks, in their nymph stage, are similar to deer tick nymphs and resemble tiny spiders. They can go unnoticed on animals and people easily, and are known to infest deer and a wide range of other hosts.