Biology Seminar: "What drives Lyme disease risk in Vermont?", talk by David Allen, Biology Dept., Middlebury College

Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in North America and Europe. Over the last two decades the incidence in Vermont has increased dramatically. Lyme disease risk is directly tied to the ecology of an area because it is transmitted by a tick vector and has a diverse community of vertebrate animal reservoirs. This makes it hard to disentangle the potential biotic and abiotic drivers of Lyme disease risk. In the Allen lab we seek to do this with a combination of tools: tick surveys and experiments, small mammal trapping, GIS, ecological modeling, and molecular approaches. In this talk I will share what we have found over the past five years and the ongoing directions we are taking. Lunch available at 12:15pm. www.middlebury.edu/academics/bio