What purpose to ticks serve? It really seems like we could easily live without, or they're at least not a valuable keystone species. Other annoying/parasitic insects are useful in obvious ways, like mosquitos which make up a great part of a bat's diet and as population control by spreading diseases. Without Mosquitos many animals would probably go extinct in areas or at least suffer without them in their diet. But Ticks just seem entirely useless; every job they do could easily be replaced by less annoying insects, so is that just true or are they actually useful in some unique way like most other bugs?
