ArticlePLoS biology2021
Why Lyme disease is common in the northern US, but rare in the south: The roles of host choice, host-seeking behavior, and tick density.
Article in PLoS biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 46 papers.
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Who cites it
46 citing papers in PubMed.
- Contrasting epigenetics of Ixodes scapularis populations.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Why are the ticks winning, and what can we do about it?Ticks and tick-borne diseases · 2026Review
- Article
- Genetic landscape of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto in Canada: a study of genetic diversity.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Reservoir host community and vector density predict human tick-borne diseases across the Eastern United States.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Rapid Northward Expansion of the Blacklegged Tick, Ixodes scapularis, in Response to Climate Change.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Variables for habitat and vertebrate hosts of Ixodes scapularis are the best ecological predictors of the spatial spread of Lyme disease in the United States (2010-2019).Parasites & vectors · 2025Article
- Borrelial Diseases Across Eurasia.Biology · 2025Review
- Genome-wide insights into genetic diversity of endemic and non-endemic Ixodes ricinus populations.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Exploring Metrics of Biological Diversity to Better Predict and Respond to Emerging Diseases.Integrative and comparative biology · 2025Review
- Tick infestation of birds in grasslands experiencing woody plant encroachment in the United States Great Plains.Journal of medical entomology · 2025Article
- Update on North American tick-borne diseases and how to diagnose them.Journal of clinical microbiology · 2025Review
- Reappraisal of the Dilution and Amplification Effect Framework: A Case Study in Lyme Disease.Ecology and evolution · 2025Review
- Spring fever: early spring predicts Ixodes pacificus (Acari: Ixodidae) activity in northwestern California.Journal of medical entomology · 2025Article
- Letter to the editor.MSMR · 2025Article
- TICKHUNTER: A Targeted Hybridization-Capture Sequencing Approach for the Detection and Characterization of Tick-borne Pathogens and Blood Meals.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Climate-driven variation in the phenology of juvenile Ixodes pacificus on lizard hosts.Parasites & vectors · 2025Article
- Different drivers, same tick: Effect of host traits, habitat, and climate on the infestation of three rodent specieInternational journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2025Article
- Estimating the density of questing Ixodes scapularis nymphs in the eastern United States using climate and land cover data.Ticks and tick-borne diseases · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Lyme disease is common in the northeastern United States, but rare in the southeast, even though the tick vector is found in both regions. Infection prevalence of Lyme spirochetes in host-seeking ticks, an important component to the risk of Lyme disease, is also high in the northeast and northern midwest, but declines sharply in the south. As ticks must acquire Lyme spirochetes from infected vertebrate hosts, the role of wildlife species composition on Lyme disease risk has been a topic of lively academic discussion. We compared tick-vertebrate host interactions using standardized sampling methods among 8 sites scattered throughout the eastern US. Geographical trends in diversity of tick hosts are gradual and do not match the sharp decline in prevalence at southern sites, but tick-host associations show a clear shift from mammals in the north to reptiles in the south. Tick infection prevalence declines north to south largely because of high tick infestation of efficient spirochete reservoir hosts (rodents and shrews) in the north but not in the south. Minimal infestation of small mammals in the south results from strong selective attachment to lizards such as skinks (which are inefficient reservoirs for Lyme spirochetes) in the southern states. Selective host choice, along with latitudinal differences in tick host-seeking behavior and variations in tick densities, explains the geographic pattern of Lyme disease in the eastern US.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.