jk1999's Identifications

I found a really tiny (2mm) anti-fella sucking blood from me! Unfortunately, the head/mandibles appear to remain in my skin after I removed the tick from the left lumbar/Iliac region of my body (last two slides). I have no idea where this fella originally came from since I have been all around NW DFW the past few days.

Microscope used: TOMLOV Digital Microscope TM-DM9

Crawling on me after I spent some time in forest habitat. Not a tick expert by any stretch of the imagination, but the research I've done leads me to believe that Dermacentor variabilis, if it occurs here, is much less common than D. andersoni - and it is very difficult to tell the two apart - it sounds like you might need electron microscope technology to successfully do it. Voucher specimen placed in Orma J. Smith Museum of Natural History (as part of the Deer Flat NWR Insect Biodiversity Survey) at The College of Idaho, Caldwell, ID.