LARAMIE -- Nineteen employees at a federal animal disease lab in Wyoming have been given the option to move with the facility to Kansas.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Arthropod-Borne Animal Disease Research Laboratory is moving to Manhattan, Kan., from Laramie.

Michael McGuire of USDA said the decision on whether to follow the lab is up to the individual workers involved.

The move is expected to be completed by next August. The lab studies livestock diseases spread by insects and arachnids, such as mosquitoes and ticks.

It has been located in Laramie since the mid-1980s.