![\"ALegUp\"](\"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/ALegUp.jpg\")
<\/a>James (`85). \u201cGrowing up, when I would visit with them in summer, we\u2019d pick black eyed peas and tomatoes, and so on. She used to say, ‘You were always scared of all the bugs. You\u2019d go running in the opposite direction!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\nJames\u2019 opinion of certain \u201cbugs\u201d is still not positive, but today she deals with them in a very different way. \u201cIt\u2019s really about what can we do to prevent disease transmission to either humans or animals,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
After living in Florida, South Carolina, Illinois, Tennessee, California and Mississippi, it was fortuitous that James\u2019 father, a 30-year U.S. Navy submariner, closed out his career at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in St. Marys, Ga., where she completed high school. Based on James\u2019 aptitude for science and interest in animals, her senior biology teacher recommended Georgia Southern.<\/p>\n
That advice delivered James straight into the tutelage of world-renowned tick and mite expert James Oliver.<\/p>\n
\u201cI interviewed with Dr. Oliver and was hired as a work study student in his acarology lab,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what started my interest in entomology. I worked as a technician and got a biology degree at Georgia Southern. He asked me if I\u2019d be interested in continuing as a graduate student and I worked with him while getting my master\u2019s degree, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Oliver, her specialty is acarology \u2013 the study of ticks, which are one of the leading carriers of diseases afflicting both humans and animals.<\/p>\n
James is the only acarologist within Veterinary Services assigned to the Centers for Epidemiology and Animal Health, an epidemiological unit within the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. \u201cVeterinary Services was very interested in my association with Georgia Southern and the Smithsonian Institute\u2019s U.S. National Tick Collection there,\u201d she said. \u201cIn addition to my expertise in tick biology and ecology, Lyme disease, and my post-doctoral studies at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in serology, and Colorado State University studying gene flow in mosquitoes.\u201d<\/p>\n
James works out of APHIS headquarters in Fort Collins, Colo.<\/p>\n
Veterinary Services wanted to develop a better understanding of tick distribution within the U.S., said James, and wanted to start a national program to document where ticks are prevalent, thus where certain animals \u2013 cattle, horses, sheep or goats \u2013 are going to be exposed to diseases being transmitted by ticks.<\/p>\n
James has continued to work with Lorenza Beati, curator of the tick collection at Georgia Southern and collaborates with her and the Veterinary Services laboratory in Ames, Iowa, which also has a tick collection database of information on tick distribution. \u201cI\u2019ve combined these two national databases and I use this to monitor changes in tick distribution \u2013 where the ticks are,\u201d said James. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten additional training. I\u2019m a geospacial analyst, so I use Geographic Information System tools to analyze what the habitats look like for these different tick species.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy early role as a master\u2019s student here at Georgia Southern was dealing with tick ecology. I incorporated those experiences with my new experiences here with USDA, using geospatial tools, so now I\u2019m able to do some modeling and mapping for Veterinary Services at both national and local scales to help design strategies for surveillance and prevention of tick-borne disease in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Entomologist Stays One Jump Ahead of Harmful Ticks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-spring-2012"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}