Through the examination of academic literature on lyme disease and our own findings from the constructed Maxent ranges we were able to identify the most important ecological conditions for optimal disease contraction and delineate high and low prediction accuracy ranges. We make the below conclusions with great caution as there is a number of possible sources of error and uncertainty. Despite the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in data reporting, there is a statistically significant increase in lyme disease cases the northeastern United States (Johnson et al, 2016). Our extrapolation outputs for 2050 show a shift in optimal lyme disease contraction areas, since we are assuming they are directly correlated to tick habitat. These results are significant enough to conclude with a reasonable degree of certainty that lyme disease contraction areas are going to observe a general northward shift as a result of climate change. Some of the drier areas in the United States will see a decrease in lyme disease cases as with climate change they will become inhabitable for ticks. Overall, our models predict that optimal lyme disease contraction areas will shift from the northern regions of the United States into southeastern provinces in Canada.
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