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Commentary: Want to predict Lyme disease risk? Count the acorns, not the deer

Recently-published long-term research found no consistent relationship between deer abundance and the density of nymphal ticks – the life stage responsible for most human Lyme disease infections. (Stock photo)

If you want to know how bad next summer’s Lyme disease season might be, it may be more useful to count the acorns on the ground than the deer in the woods.
That is one of the surprising conclusions from more than 30 years of research tracking ticks, mice, deer, weather and other wildlife in a Lyme disease hot spot. The findings, published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenge some long-standing assumptions about what drives Lyme disease risk.

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