Thirty-Five Years of Forest Data Suggest Acorn Crops Predict Lyme Risk Better Than Deer Counts Do

For decades, the working assumption about Lyme disease has been that more deer means more ticks and more risk. A study tracking one forest for more than 35 years found no such relationship and instead pointed to something falling from oak trees.

The synthesis of long-term data, published this week in PNAS, comes from researchers at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and Bard College working on a 2,000-acre forested site in New York's Dutchess County. Across the full record, deer abundance showed no statistical relationship with the density of nymphal ticks.