Ticks could be attracted across air gaps several times larger than themselves by the static electricity that their hosts naturally accumulate, researchers on the University of Bristol have discovered.

This likely greatly increases their efficiency at finding hosts to parasitize because ticks usually are not able to jumping, and due to this fact that is the one mechanism by which they’d find a way to make contact with hosts which are beyond the reach of their tiny legs.

The findings, published today in Current Biology, are the primary known example of static electricity being implicated within the attachment of an animal to a different animal.

Ticks carry loads of nasty diseases, including Lyme disease, that make many individuals’s and animal’s lives miserable, and may even cause death. Due to this fact there is a big social and economic profit to trying to scale back the flexibility of ticks to connect onto people and the animals humans rely on.

We knew that many animals, including humans, can accumulate quite significant electrostatic charges.

We see this once we get a static shock after bouncing on a trampoline, or when rubbing a balloon on our hair, for instance. But this electrostatic charging also happens to animals in nature once they rub against objects of their environment like grass, sand, or other animals. These charges are surprisingly high, and could be comparable to a whole lot if not hundreds of volts – greater than you get out of your plug sockets at home! Importantly, static charges exert forces on other static charges, either attractive or repulsive depending whether or not they are positive or negative.

We wondered whether the static charges that mammals, birds, and reptiles naturally accumulate might be high enough that parasitic ticks might be lifted through the air by electrostatic attraction onto these animals, due to this fact improving their efficiency at finding hosts to feed on.”

Sam England, Lead Creator, Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences

The team initially tested the concept by bringing statically charged rabbit fur and other materials near ticks and observing whether or not they were drawn to them.

They witnessed the ticks being readily pulled through the air across air gaps of several millimeters or centimeters (the equivalent of humans jumping up several flights of stairs) by these charged surfaces, and so investigated further.

Sam continued: “First, we used previous measurements of the standard charge carried by animals to mathematically predict the strength of the electrical field that’s generated between a charged animal and the grass that ticks like to take a seat on and wait for hosts to pass by.

“Then, we placed ticks underneath an electrode, with an air gap in between, and increased the charge on the electrode until the ticks were attracted onto the electrode. By doing this we were capable of determine the minimum electric field strength at which the ticks might be attracted. This minimum electric field was inside the order of magnitude predicted by the mathematical calculations of the electrical field between a charged animal and grass, due to this fact it is probably going that ticks in nature are attracted onto their hosts by static electricity.”

There are several wider implications and potential applications to those findings. Firstly, the phenomenon likely applies to many other parasitic species that intend to make contact and fix to their hosts, equivalent to mites, fleas, or lice, and so it might be a universal mechanism for animals to make contact with and fix onto one another.

Beyond the purely scientific implications, the invention opens the door for brand spanking new technologies to be developed to reduce tick bites in humans, pets, and cattle, equivalent to developing anti-static sprays.

Sam concluded: “Now we have now discovered that ticks could be lifted across air gaps several times larger than themselves by the static electricity that other animals naturally construct up. This makes it easier for them to search out and fix onto animals that they need to latch onto and feed from. Until now, we had no concept that an animal may gain advantage from static electricity in this fashion, and it really opens up one’s imagination as to what number of invisible forces like this might be helping animals and plants live their lives.”

Now the team plan to analyze whether the ticks are able to sensing the approaching electrostatic charge of their prospective hosts.

Source:

Journal reference:

England, S. J., et al. (2023) Static electricity passively attracts ticks onto hosts. Current Biology. doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.06.021.