Here is a comprehensive article on the whole saga of Borrelia and tick research outside of the US Northeast. Courtesy Discover Magazine. See links below to the source.

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec/14-southern-gothic#.UnUeViR7XRQ

FROM THE DECEMBER 2013 ISSUE

The Confounding Debate Over Lyme Disease in the South

The debilitating tick-borne disease is well-documented north of the Mason-Dixon line, but does it exist beyond that?

By Wendy Orent|Friday, November 01, 2013

"...The new spirochetes, Oliver and Rudenko have shown, reinforce the sense of ecological complexity characterizing Southern Borrelia cycles involving lizards, songbirds, small mammals (cotton mice; cotton, wood and rice rats; chipmunks; squirrels; rabbits; and raccoons) and a welter of ticks — lone stars and blacklegged ticks and three Ixodes species that seldom bite people: dentatus, affinis and minor. These convoluted cycles mean that the neat Northern picture has, in the South, been blown apart into hundreds of fractured images...."  (CONTINUED)

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec/14-southern-gothic#.UnUeViR7XRQ