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The pathogen that causes Lyme disease is just as common among ticks residing near the shore as it is among ticks from woodlands, known high-risk habitats, researchers reported Friday (April 23) in Applied and Environmental Microbiology. They examined the prevalence of the Lyme disease–causing bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi in two California counties and found the same proportion of western black-legged ticks (Ixodes pacificus) were infected with the pathogen in forests as they were in chaparral adjacent to beaches.
“The high rate of disease-carrying ticks in the coastal chaparral was really surprising to us,” coauthor Daniel Salkeld of Colorado State University says in a press release.
In their paper, he and his colleagues explain that the “archetypal” habitat for Lyme disease in California is the oak woodland, home to gray squirrels, which serve as hosts to ticks. “A few years ago I would have said the ticks [near ...
