Research on ticks and tick-borne diseases uses both vertebrate and invertebrate animals, with welfare considerations for host animals often inadequately considered.
Tick and parasite research welfare is a subset of the broader issue of animal welfare in infectious disease research, with an additional complication: the experimental infection itself causes welfare harm through the parasitic infestation. Rabbits used as tick feeding hosts experience itching, skin damage, and blood loss from repeated infestation cycles. In vitro membrane feeding systems that provide blood to ticks through artificial membranes can replace animal hosts for many research questions and represent an important refinement advance.