Description: | Caption: This photograph depicts a left lateral view of a deer tick, or blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis, as it was questing on a blade of grass. The Lyme disease bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, is spread through the bite of infected ticks. The blacklegged tick spreads the disease in the northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and northcentral United States, while the western blacklegged tick, Ixodes pacificus, spreads the disease on the Pacific Coast. |