Native, Invasive or Native Invasive? Ixodes Ricinus Ticks in the Belluno Mountains, between Memories, Perceptions and Encounters

Abstract

As part of a study on the social perception of ticks in Italy (Belluno) and Slovenia (Gorenjska), this contribution focuses on the doubt of the residents of the Belluno province about the origin of the presence of ticks in the area. Absent from collective memory until the 1970s, today these parasites, and the associated risk of disease, are described as an invasion. This contribution first examines the debate within invasion biology about whether a native species can become invasive. It then traces the past of Ixodes ricinus ticks, Lyme borreliosis, and red deer through three historical moments: their presence in the Copper Age, when Ötzi, the man who lived in the Tyrolean Alps, became the first person to date known to have contracted this disease; the five thousand years in which traces of the ticks were lost; and their reappearance, population expansion, and geographic spread in the last fifty years. Matching the biological history of ticks with the memories, experiences, and reflections of the people of Belluno, these animals seem to qualify as both native and invasive. Beyond the labels that can be used to describe this phenomenon, it highlights the profound complexity of ecological relationships and the challenge – scientific, social, political, and economic – involved in what to do of ticks, and with ticks, in the current era of rapid and uncertain socio-ecological change.