The tick versus us

Image via WikipediaEhrlichia: New Tick Infection May Be Linked to Environmental Change

If the rising risks of Lyme disease, Anaplasmosis or Babesiosis weren't reasons enough to take extra precautions while outdoors this summer -- and to do a thorough tick check before going back inside -- researchers have now identified yet another unpleasant tick-transmitted disease.


A still unnamed, tick-borne bacterium appears to have transmitted ehrlichiosis to at least 25 people in Wisconsin and Minnesota, with more cases likely unaccounted for due to the flu-like symptoms common among other diseases that pass through ticks, according to a new paper published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.


Richard Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., explained that when we degrade or fragment habitats, or homogenize them through agriculture or livestock production, we tend to create ideal conditions for the culprits responsible for many diseases. These are usually the smaller and hardier species, such as the mice and deer that provide the means for ticks to contract and spread Lyme disease as well as the American robins that play a similar role alongside mosquitoes in the life cycle of the West Nile virus.


"The first types of species we lose are the predators and other larger-bodied creatures, because they usually require more space to maintain viable populations," Ostfeld, an expert in the link between biodiversity and infectious disease, told The Huffington Post. "The littler, more generalized species are the ones that persist in disturbed ecosystems."


Meanwhile, in the case of tick-borne infections, deforestation allows for the growth of tall grasses that appeal to the insects. Such landscape changes are often linked to rising human development, which means more humans living in closer proximity to more ticks. The likely end result: more disease.

We have tried to battle nature. Now...

"By entering an environment that has its own logic and hierarchy, humans behave as a virus," said Dr. Pappas. "Let us call, then, such emerging zoonotic infections a part of the environment's immune response against the human intruder."

Our actions in opposition to nature are the diseases.  Nature just trying to fight back.  Love that last idea.