Comparative reservoir competence of , C57BL/6J, and C3H/HeN for B31.

, a Lyme disease spirochete, causes a range of acute and chronic maladies in humans. However, a primary vertebrate reservoir in the United States, the white-footed deermouse , is reported not to have reduced fitness following infection. Although laboratory strains of mice have successfully been leveraged to model acute human Lyme disease, the ability of these rodents to model interactions remains understudied.