3 ms·
I remember having concerns over finding a tick on myself in the early 90's. The doctor assuaged me at the time among other things with the fact that only a cou
by stevenwoo 9y ago
I remember having concerns over finding a tick on myself in the early 90's. The doctor assuaged me at the time among other things with the fact that only a couple of states in the Northeast had to be extremely vigilant about ticks and we were in the South. Now the range for concern is much of the entire range of deer in the United States and researchers are finding it in urban areas in Western Europe.
A small average change is small but it's something. There was some separate issue about saiga antelope undergoing catastrophic die off a few years ago. The best theory now is a temperature change enabling bacterial infection by bacteria that were always present but not killing the antelope. The average temperature would not change that much as per your data but the extremes are going to swing more with climate change.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42720955 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42720955
- phyller 9y agoHow does warmer weather explain ticks moving farther south?
- stevenwoo 9y agoThe ticks carrying the Lyme disease bacteria were trapped in the Northeast (for the USA). Climate change changed the feeding behavior of the prey of juvenile nymph ticks, the main vector for increasing the habitat is mice not deer. The adults feed on deer but most infections in people that we know about come from nymphs ( probably because they are so tiny). A laymen's explanation: https://qz.com/441583/lyme-disease-is-spreading-faster-than-ever-and-humans-are-partly-to-blame/ https://qz.com/441583/lyme-disease-is-spreading-faster-than-... "But our rapidly changing climate also seems to be making it easier for Lyme to spread, by shifting when blacklegged ticks typically feed." This means it's simply a matter of waiting for the temperature to rise just a bit more for the Lyme disease to be a problem in the USA everywhere there are deer. There is the difficulty with temperature theory helping the spread the same way in Europe which the article covers, but Lyme disease in Europe is a slightly different bacteria as well. The National Science Foundation explanation: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/ecoinf/lyme.jsp https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/ecoinf/lyme.jsp