Comments on: Is Dilution the Solution?

By: Dr. John Stribley

Dr. John Stribley — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:50:56 +0000

I’ve been teaching my students and colleagues for years about the importance of biodiversity in mitigating the evolution and spread of highly virulent forms of microbes. Indeed as species diversity declines, the populations of those that remain increase exponentially to take advantage of the resources and space left unfilled… if microbes are competing for resources (hosts) then natural selection should favor more virulent strains as host availability increases (e.g., burn your bridges behind you so your competition can’t follow). To make matters worse, those species that can coexist with us, are immunologically similar enough that viruses can “lock-in” on us and spread interspecifically. Perhaps biodiversity is driven by this natural checks and balance system as imposed by a rapidly changing and adaptive microbial community.

By: Socrates

Socrates — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:23:10 +0000

Ostfeld has a long history of “science” that keeps trying to get the focus off the deer as carriers of the ticks. For people who don’t want the deer seen as the problem, Ostfeld is the answer.

Deer are the primary reason why there are so many black-legged ticks (a/k/a deer ticks), but deer don’t carry the disease itself. Therefore, Ostfeld “studies” the role of the white-footed mouse and other small creatures, since they do in fact serve as Lyme reservoirs. He ignores plenty of evidence that if you reduce the deer population to the appropriate threshold (10-15 per square mile), you get the tick population down dramatically and the Lyme disease drops with it.

No other forest animal is present in sufficient numbers and densities to serve the role of the deer in transporting huge numbers of ticks, giving the adult female her last blood meal before she drops off and lays 2,000 to 3,000 tick eggs and starts the tick life cycle all over again.

Secret hidden in plain sight: We would still have a huge deer overpopulation problem even if they were not implicated in Lyme disease. Most of our worst Lyme areas have deer densities of 60 deer per square mile or higher, four to six times what it should be if you want to reduce the disease, not to mention the forest destruction caused by the deer. (The deer destroy the habitat of other small forest creatures, songbirds, native wildflowers, etc., and leave invasive plant species as monocultures, the only things that will survive the deer overbrowsing.)

By: mary

mary — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:14:48 +0000

A good web page that has a interactive map that tracks Tick- Borne vectors is…. http://WWW.DOGSANDTICKS.COM. It tracks by State and County.Our Four leg family members have ticks that often love to bite the owner.One bite could change both your pets life and yours.I look forward to the results of this research.

By: Jacey Barrows

Jacey Barrows — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:51:11 +0000

Ops, I was writing too fast and didn’t put the her website right. it’s http://www.beatlymedisease.com

also there are good wikipedia information online about what to do about Lyme Disease.
Again, thank you for the article and the research!

By: Jacey Barrows

Jacey Barrows — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:49:48 +0000

Awesome article. I actually think the dilution effect would work. This makes sense. I was bitten in my backyard and have been sick with Lyme for 13 years now. The problem with healthcare is an entirely different story but this problem with Lyme effects everyone, even athletes like this runner http://www.beatlymediseae.com who apparently went hiking and was bitten and remained sick for 4 years until she finally recovered from it. Once people are bitten it’s so hard to get over these nasty pathogens. Thanks so much for the article.