Lyme Disease and the Passenger Pigeon?

There is another possible twist to the complicated ecological chain of events presented by Clive G. Jones et al. (Reports, 13 Feb., p. 1023) whereby the incidence of Lyme disease might increase following population increases of mice allowed by a big mast year of acorns. A major competitor of deer and mice for these bumper crops has been absent from the eastern deciduous forests for a century. The extinct passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was a nomadic wanderer that specialized on a diet of the superabundant, but unpredictable, crops of mast (1). With a population estimated at 2 to 5 billion (2), concentrated in enormous flocks, passenger pigeons congregated wherever there were huge crops of mast. The birds were so efficient at denuding the woods of nuts that many observers noted that native wildlife and feral hogs could not find sufficient food after a pigeon flock had passed through (2). Is it possible that, in the presence of passenger pigeons, the population explosions of mice in mast years, reported by Jones et al., would have been less likely. Could the outbreaks of Lyme disease in the late 20th century have been a delayed consequence of the extinction of the passenger pigeon a century earlier?