The prevalence of ticks that can carry Lyme disease is expected to be higher than ever in much of Canada this year, researchers say. Vett Lloyd, a researcher and director of the Lloyd Tick Lab at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, says that as the impacts of climate change progress, each tick season will likely be worse than the last. “As the winters are getting milder and shorter, the ticks are surviving better, and they have more time to feed and have a tick romance,” Lloyd said in a recent interview Friday. “Once a female tick finds a male and food, she can produce for roughly 3,000 eggs. When this starts happening, (the population) explodes very quickly.” Nova Scotia has the highest ratio of ticks to people in Canada, Lloyd said, and is second to Ontario in the total number of reported ticks.