I find it fascinating that the modern range of lyme disease overlaps with the range of the chronic wasting prion disease of deer. The two large clusters of lyme in North America overlap with the more recent two clusters of wasting disease (later spread than the first major cluster further west). This suggests to me that there’s a common factor driving the spread of both, probably something about messed up forest ecology.
The lyme map looks to me like the Northern part of the whitetail deer density map. Ixodes scapularis is a tick attacking primarily whitetail deer. Given that deer carry ticks around that doesn’t seem surprising. If there’s a Western cluster of wasting disease I would guess that it’s also about whitetail deers.
Indeed the wasting disease first exploded in the west, and then nucleated new thick clusters near the great lakes and most recently in PA/MD/VA (which has been spreading fast). The other places it is found outside the major clusters don’t seem to be expanding the way they are in those places.
I find it fascinating that the modern range of lyme disease overlaps with the range of the chronic wasting prion disease of deer. The two large clusters of lyme in North America overlap with the more recent two clusters of wasting disease (later spread than the first major cluster further west). This suggests to me that there’s a common factor driving the spread of both, probably something about messed up forest ecology.
https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/occurrence.html looks to me like a quite different map but that’s likely the first cluster you are talking about.
The lyme map looks to me like the Northern part of the whitetail deer density map. Ixodes scapularis is a tick attacking primarily whitetail deer. Given that deer carry ticks around that doesn’t seem surprising. If there’s a Western cluster of wasting disease I would guess that it’s also about whitetail deers.
Indeed the wasting disease first exploded in the west, and then nucleated new thick clusters near the great lakes and most recently in PA/MD/VA (which has been spreading fast). The other places it is found outside the major clusters don’t seem to be expanding the way they are in those places.