Text view

The Secret Life Inside Ticks

- Joana Ferrolho and Joana Couto and Gustavo Seron Sanches and Sandra Antunes and Ana Domingos

Ticks ingest the host's blood, and in the blood, there are cells that contain the disease-causing microbes. We call them infected cells. Once the infected cells are ingested, their first stop will be the tick's guts, which function as the tick's stomach, where these microbes start their journey through the tick's body. Depending on the disease-causing microbe, they can stay in the guts shorter or longer periods of time, for example, for only a few hours, for days, or for weeks. From the guts, the microbes travel through the gut wall to go for a swim in a liquid called haemolymph, a fluid that circulates inside of the tick's body. This liquid is rich in "little soldiers," the cells of the tick's immune system, which are constantly patrolling and preventing invaders from harming the tick.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: PG
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2018.00035

Text difficulty