The abundance of cattle is the primary influence on the
prevalence of two tick-borne pathogens, according to a paper in
the April Applied and Environmental Microbiology. One of these,
Anaplasma phagocytophilum, causes human granulocytic
anaplasmosis, and the other, Borrelia burgdorferi, causes Lyme
disease. Although other studies have examined the effect of
hosts on tick and tick-borne pathogen dynamics, this is the
first to clarify the role of host abundance on prevalence of the
two pathogens in their natural habitat, where wildlife and
domestic livestock coexist. The impetus for the research was the
fact that in recent decades, gamekeepers in the study area, a
wildlife preserve in the northern Iberian peninsula, had
suffered Lyme disease, and had noticed an increasing abundance
of ticks, says first author Francisco Ruiz-Fons, of the
Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos, Ciudad Real,
Spain. “Our working hypothesis was that wild and domestic
ungulates would be primary drivers of the abundance of