MILLBROOK, N.Y. — A disease ecologist says the Northeast should prepare for a surge in Lyme disease this spring.
Richard Osfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook says the population of white-footed mice is crashing due to a small acorn crop. That means ticks that carry Lyme disease will look for other mammals to bite, such as humans.
Ecologists at the Cary Institute have been studying connections between acorn abundance, mice, black-legged ticks and Lyme disease for more than two decades.
They say a bumper crop of acorns in 2010 caused mouse populations to soar in 2011. With more mice came more ticks. Acorns were scarce last fall, meaning fewer mice this spring and a lot of hungry ticks.
Osfeld says the highest disease risk is May through July.
Wouldn’t it be nice if these ticks preferred gypsy moth worms as a host?
Please post , what their life cycle is.. How long do they live without a host.
http://www.cdc.gov/ticks/life_cycle_and_hosts.html should help you out with this. Lots of good info on the cdc websites.
Living in an area with confirmed Lyme endemic, this is not good news. An open winter like this didn’t kill too many ticks off either. All that together warns of a bad year.
After reading some of the info on the CDC’s website, I feel the need to clarify something. If the tick has a bloodborne pathogen, the likelihood that it will be transmitted to the human host IS EXTRAORDINARILY SLIM. The CDC has to put this information up to not get sued, basically. For instance, if you are single person to ever get a bloodborne disease from a tick, you will probably be aggressively sought after by medical and pharmaceutical laboratories to be a study for the rest of your life, and tested to see why your immune system allowed the infection to be transmitted.
So – lots of acorns = bad.
But fewer acorns also = bad?
Free range your chickens and you will have few ticks….