Acorns And Mice Driving Unusual Lyme Disease Risks (ICEID 2)
By Maryn McKenna
Email Author
March 13, 2012 |
4:09 pm |
Categories: Science Blogs, Superbug
The northeastern United States faces potentially ?the worst year yet? for Lyme disease and other tickborne infections because of the periodic abundance of a little-noticed component of the disease?s complex ecology: acorns.
Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, explained during a presentation Tuesday at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases (ICEID) that a heavy crop of acorns in 2010 ? a phenomenon known as a ?mast year? ? fueled a 2011 population bloom in white-footed mice, which stash acorns for winter food and begin breeding earlier in years when they are well-fed. That surge intersected with the two-year lifecycle of the ticks that transmit Lyme disease, for which mice are the key host, and this summer could produce a bumper crop of infected tick nymphs looking to bite large mammals ? including humans...
