ICTTD PROJECT EXTENSION APPROVED

I am glad to be able to announce that the ICTTD Coordination Action Project has been extended for another year until the end of August 2010. The extension gives us the opportunity to collate and disseminate the large number of project deliverables and also creates sufficient time to finalize all administrative matters.
Good news also for the readers of this Newsletter, since we will be able to continue this publication. I apologize for the late arrival of this issue and for the lack of illustrations. The cover illustration shows an engorg ed female

Dermacentor reticulatus female tick fed to repletion on an artificial  membrane here at the Utrecht Centre for Tick-borne Diseases (UCTD). A good example of successful ICTTD information exchange and collaboration between members of the coordination action facilitated by the team of Patrick Guerin at Neuchatel, who demonstrated in an ICTTDfunded workshop how to go about the in vitro feeding of Ixodes ricinus. As a result, the in vitro feeding methods appear to work for a broader range of ixodid tick species.