It’s the Porcini season one again – the exquisite wild mushrooms that grow in the mountains around Barga but this year there is a difference – an added ingredient to the ritual of walking up through the chestnuts and birch woods in search of the elusive Boletus edulis. Some of the mushroom hunters are reporting a dramatic increase in the number of ticks that they are finding on their bodies during the hunt. Yesterday one of the hunters found 10 of the blood sucking parasites on his body and as he said “up to 5 he could deal with but removing 10 was more than he could manage on his own” and so he was forced to call into the local hospital to do the job. Ticks are vectors of a number of diseases, including Lyme disease, Q fever, tularemia, tick-borne relapsing fever, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis and Tick-borne meningoencephalitis.

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Some local experts are wondering if the long damp winter this year may have had some effect on the dramatic increase in tick numbers this year.  It looks as though the already difficult job of collecting mushrooms is going to be even more fraught with problems during 2009.

Tick is the common name for the small arachnids in superfamily Ixodoidea that, along with other mites, constitute the Acarina. Ticks are ectoparasites (external parasites), living by hematophagy on the blood of mammals, birds, and occasionally reptiles and amphibians.

Ticks are blood-feeding parasites that are often found in tall grass and shrubs where they will wait to attach to a passing host. A tick will attach itself to its host by inserting its chelicerae (cutting mandibles) and hypostome (feeding tube) into the skin. The hypostome is covered with recurved teeth and serves as an anchor. Physical contact is the only method of transportation for ticks. Ticks do not jump or fly, although they may drop from their perch and fall onto a host. Some species stalk the host by foot. – source