Gilvarg's seven interns, plus an additional helper, trek through the Long Island Pine Barrens to sample ticks on an experimental plot.

Intern Molly Franklin looks on as her peers establish the border of an experimental plot. Each plot is 16-by-25-meters.

Interns Eric Jergensen (left) and Luke Myers (right) scan corduroy fabric they've dragged through the underbrush for any ticks that have latched on. They use this "corduroy on a stick" technique to census tick populations on plots that have experienced different burn histories.

An intern uses tweezers to pluck a tick off the corduroy.

Intern Melanie Costello holds an ethanol vial against her hand to make the tick within more visible. The team tallies specimens back in the lab.

This map illustrates where the study's 23 plots are in relation to areas of previous fire. The experimental plots are marked with green, orange, or red dots depending on whether they are control/no-fire sites, infrequent-fire sites, or frequent-fire sites, respectively. The wildfires are denoted by amorphous shapes on the map, and the prescribed burns are identifiable as rectangles. The name and year of each fire, excluding the two most recent ones, are recorded in the legend. The bold, black line represents the border of Brookhaven's property.

This aerial image displays a section of Brookhaven's property before (left) and after (right) a prescribed burn. A firetruck drives on the service road in the after photo.