URBANA, Ill. - Communities face challenges in the best practices to battle ticks and mosquitoes. Holly Tuten, associate scientist in vector ecology from the Illinois Natural History Survey, will provide surveillance research and practical management strategies at noon, April 9 as part of the Illinois Extension Local Government Education online webinar series.

Register for the webinar, Spring Thaw: Ticks, Disease, Public Health, and Landscaping Practices. Tuten will cover the surveillance research on ticks and mosquitoes in regard to climate change and discuss practical and management-related ways to address problems in communities.

Tuten earned a biology bachelors degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she conducted research on drosophila americana and field work on tick surveillance. She earned master and doctorate degrees in entomology at Clemson University as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, investigating the ecology of arthropod vectors in zoological parks. Her first post-doc at the University of Kentucky laid the groundwork for a mass release of modified mosquitoes in American Samoa. Her second post-doc was on invasive mosquito vectors at the Institute for Parasitology in Zurich where she also provided taxonomic expertise to the arthropod diagnostic lab. She later spent two years training and working with USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service as a risk analyst for the prevention, detection, and control of invasive pests in the United States. She conducts research on ticks and mosquitoes and runs the Illinois statewide active tick surveillance program through a contract with the Illinois Department of Public Health.

University of Illinois Extension provides equal opportunities in programs and employment.

Source: Nancy Ouedraogo
Extension Specialist, Community Economic Development