Scent detection dogs detect a species of hard tick, Dermacentor albipictus, with comparable accuracy and efficiency to traditional tick drag surveys.

Background: Accurate surveillance data are critical for addressing tick and tick-borne pathogen risk to human and animal health. Current surveillance methods for detecting invading or expanding tick species are limited in their ability to scale efficiently to state or national levels. In this study we explored the potential use of scent detection dogs to assist field surveys for a hard tick species: Dermacentor albipictus.

Methods: We used a series of indoor and in situ training simulations to teach scent detection dogs to recognize D. albipictus scent, distinguish tick scent from associated vegetation, and develop a cautious search pattern. After training, we deployed both a scent detection dog survey team and a human-only survey team on transect and surveillance plot surveys then compared the detection rates and efficiency of both methods.

Results: Scent detection dogs required more time and money to train on field surveys but were comparable to traditional tick drags when accounting for cost per unit area surveyed. There was a lack of agreement on positive (ticks present) versus negative (ticks not present) sites between the two methods, implying that neither method is particularly reliable at detecting D. albipictus.

Conclusions: Estimating detection bias and false negative rates for tick surveillance methods such as tick drags will be important for accurately evaluating tick-borne disease risk across space and into the future. We found scent detection dogs to be a reasonable alternative sampling approach to consider when ticks are at low abundance or patchily distributed such as during tick range expansion or novel invasions. Scent detection dogs may also be useful for sampling for ticks in areas or along surfaces that are difficult to sample with the traditional tick drag technique like at ports of entry or livestock competitions.