Chapter 52, Problem 12PIAT

Summary Introduction

To review:

Based on the graph’s data, the percentage of ticks on mice that were infected with Borrelia burgdorferi (B. burgdorferi) and the percentage of ticks on opossums that were groomed off and killed.

Introduction:

B. burgdorferi is the bacterium that is transferred into the body of humans by the ticks. It is an endoparasite that lives inside the human body and causes Lyme disease. The newly hatched ticks do not harbor B. burgdorferi bacterium as they are killed by the host when they crawl onto the host organism, and if they are successful in harvesting the blood from their host, then they are generally not infected by B. burgdorferi. A bar diagram showing the proportion of larval ticks that fed and caused infection versus host species is given below: