Submission Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract
At local scales, dynamics of ticks and tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease are driven by resource pulses, such as mast seeding in forest trees, that creates increases in tick hosts. Tick-borne diseases in humans have nearly doubled between 1940 and 2004 and understanding the dynamics of infectious diseases has long been of interest for ecologists. The family Ixodidae is the most capable of transmitting pathogens to humans and tick-borne diseases are the most common vector of illness in the United States. The objective of this research is to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of ticks and tick-borne diseases, which may be a key predictor for the risk of zoonotic diseases. We hypothesized that the level of synchrony in tick abundance will decrease with geographic distance and ultimately manifest as asynchrony at a subcontinental scale, following the pattern revealed in mast seeding of North American trees. We used datasets on ticks from the family Ixodidae from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) from 2014 to 2021 to quantify the level of synchrony in tick dynamics at 13 NEON sites spanning over 2,000 km across the contiguous United States. In the analysis of synchrony, we found that nymph and pathogen show plausible asynchronous patterns over distance. We anticipate that the spatiotemporal variation between precipitation and temperature could be the drivers of nymph and pathogen synchrony. Detailed information on local-level variation in mast-seeding dynamics and host population dynamics, along with climatic patterns will provide more insight into the drivers of tick dynamics.
Spatiotemporal patterns of ticks and tick-borne disease dynamics at NEON sites across a sub-continental scale.
At local scales, dynamics of ticks and tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease are driven by resource pulses, such as mast seeding in forest trees, that creates increases in tick hosts. Tick-borne diseases in humans have nearly doubled between 1940 and 2004 and understanding the dynamics of infectious diseases has long been of interest for ecologists. The family Ixodidae is the most capable of transmitting pathogens to humans and tick-borne diseases are the most common vector of illness in the United States. The objective of this research is to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of ticks and tick-borne diseases, which may be a key predictor for the risk of zoonotic diseases. We hypothesized that the level of synchrony in tick abundance will decrease with geographic distance and ultimately manifest as asynchrony at a subcontinental scale, following the pattern revealed in mast seeding of North American trees. We used datasets on ticks from the family Ixodidae from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) from 2014 to 2021 to quantify the level of synchrony in tick dynamics at 13 NEON sites spanning over 2,000 km across the contiguous United States. In the analysis of synchrony, we found that nymph and pathogen show plausible asynchronous patterns over distance. We anticipate that the spatiotemporal variation between precipitation and temperature could be the drivers of nymph and pathogen synchrony. Detailed information on local-level variation in mast-seeding dynamics and host population dynamics, along with climatic patterns will provide more insight into the drivers of tick dynamics.
Comments
A. Sofia Rivera -DePaul University
Jessica Barton -DePaul University
Courtenay Strong -University of Utah
Benjamin Zuckerberg -University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jalene M. LaMontagne-DePaul University