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Watch for bumper crop of ticks this spring
Apr 07, 2017 12:02 am
Steve Ditlea reports in the Poughkeepsie Journal that because of a bumper crop in acorns in 2015, there is a higher risk of Lyme disease this year. "The reason we're more at risk this year is because in the fall of 2015 there was a huge crop of acorns in our forests, which happens every two to five years," said Felicia Keesing, a biologist at Bard College. "That leads to a huge increase in the population of infected mice in the forests the following summer, which is now linked to an increase in Lyme disease in the subsequent year, because of ticks carrying it from their previous meal on a mouse." Read the full story in the Poughkeepsie Journal.