My 10,000-mile tour of UC Nature in search of ticks

By Sam Sambado, PhD, MS, MA (she/her)

I designed a 10,000-mile experiment to ask a simple question: when are ticks active? And if we know when they’re active, can we better gauge Lyme disease risk in California? To answer this question, I turned to UC Nature, which has stations across California’s diverse habitats and climates—many of them suitable for ticks. I thought these reserves were ideal places to test how varying climates shape varying tick-borne disease risk. 

This idea came from my own experiences as a lifelong Californian. I grew up in the Central Valley but escaped the summer heat by heading to the coast. Later, I spent many “winters” in Southern California at UCLA and UCSB while watching the NorCal snow cams. I thought, if I was having such strong behavioral responses to latitudinal temperature gradients, I figured ticks probably did too. 

I also knew that working in UC Nature gave me the opportunity to apply for a Mathias Graduate Student Research Grant. A few months later, with grant funding in hand, I began crisscrossing the state in search of ticks. My loop took me to 11 reserves over 12 days — losing one day to the Santa Cruz Island ferry – and I repeated this cycle for five months. Each loop started in Clear Lake (at McLaughlin Natural Reserve) and ended in Calabasas (at Stunt Ranch Santa Monica Mountains Reserve), alternating between inland and coastal stations along the way. By the end, the journey had added 10,000 miles to my car, which still bears a few dents that remind me of this journey. 

Most of my sampling was far less glamorous than the mileage suggests. It meant slow walks through the woods, a white cloth dragging behind me, and pockets crammed with tweezers and vials—the essentials for collecting ticks. 

While my research question seemed simple on the surface, the logistics were anything but. For a one-person team, the project would have been impossible without UC Nature. Every aspect relied on the reserves’ infrastructure and support. After long days of sampling and hours on the road, having a nice place to rest was a lifeline and made the schedule feel manageable. Reserve directors made sure I had a place to stay, shared gate codes in advance, helped me navigate pandemic protocols, and checked in to make sure I was safe. In the moments we did overlap, I experienced many acts of kindness – tupperwares of cookies, cactus coolers on hot days, and conversations brimming with enthusiasm for guiding the next generation of ecologists. Equally invaluable was the depth of local knowledge staff shared, which helped get my project off the ground. I remain deeply grateful for the time they gave me, knowing they were juggling neverending to-do lists. 

All of this support made it possible for me to begin my field journey in early 2021. Because this was pre-vaccine and mid-uncertainty, I spent much of my 50 days of traveling alone in the field. At first the silence spooked me; I even slept with a pocket knife under my pillow, which is funny now because I was probably safer there than anywhere else. But eventually the quiet became something I became comfortable with, then relied on. I started a small tradition: after setting up camp each evening, I’d go for a stroll. Nothing rushed – just enough time to test how far away I could ID a bird, notice soon-to-bloom wildflowers, or trace animal paths through the grass. Those walks became a kind of sanity check, and the space where new ideas had room to breathe. One of them eventually grew into my first grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health. 

Of course, this being California, wildfire inevitably shaped some of my field sites. With four of the reserves I sampled having experienced major wildfires the year before, I paired up with a UC Santa Cruz team to look at post-fire landscapes. I received a second Mathias Grant to support that work. Watching landscapes recover—burn scars becoming green and silence filling with birdsong – reminded me that long-term ecological data are shaped by disturbance. Those observations sharpened the scientific questions I was asking: how ticks shift within a season, how climate gradients can act as natural experiments, and how post-fire environments affect ecological communities. 

When vaccines arrived and more people returned to the reserves, I realized how much I’d missed sharing these spaces. I got to know other researchers over coffee or bonfires, swapped stories, and learned from staff who made time for us. On my last night of fieldwork at Santa Cruz Island, a few researchers held a barbeque under the stars, talking about what it means to be a scientist in a polarized world. It was a simple moment that captured the kind of field experience I hope all researchers have: safe, collaborative, and grounded in the landscape. 

Five years before all this, I’d first encountered UC Nature through its California Ecology & Conservation (CEC) course. I had no idea what I was signing up for, but those 50 days across the reserves taught me whatecology is. Returning as a PhD student taught me how to useecology to understand a changing world. 

The long drives, solitary days, and pandemic uncertainties were challenging – but the chance to spend time in these ecosystems and reflect in solitude made my UC Nature experience rewarding and unforgettable. A life goal of mine is to visit every UC reserve. I’ve made it to 20 so far—Lassen, you’re next. And wherever I go, I’ll keep my evening-walk tradition alive. 

Lastly, I want to extend my sincere thanks to the reserve staff who made this experience possible: Catherine Koehler (McLaughlin Natural Reserve), Shane Waddell and Ross Brennan (Quail Ridge Reserve), Allison Kidder & Sarah Roy (Point Reyes Field Station), Joe Miller (Fort Ord Natural Reserve), Jennifer Hunter (Hastings Natural History Reservation), Keith Seydel (Kenneth S. Norris Rancho Marino Reserve), Mark Readdie (Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve), Cristina Sandoval (Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve), Kate McCurdy, Nicole Evans, and Heather Constable (Sedgwick Reserve), Lyndal Laughrin and Jay Reti (Santa Cruz Island Reserve), and Gary Bucciarelli (Stunt Ranch Santa Monica Mountains Reserve). I’m especially grateful to UC Nature Program Coordinator Erin Marnocha, who took a chance on a kid with no ecology experience from the CEC waitlist—an opportunity that truly changed the course of my career. 

Sam Sambado is currently a postdoctoral scholar researching climate and land-use impacts on vector-borne diseases at Stanford University in Dr. Erin Mordecai’s lab. She received her PhD from UC Santa Barbara in 2025 while in the lab groups of Dr. Cherie Briggs and Dr. Andy MacDonald. [email protected] | https://samsambado.weebly.com/