Climate differentially impacts ticks infected and uninfected with .

Climate change continues to alter the behavior and distribution of species worldwide, with major ramifications for the transmission and risk of infectious diseases, including those caused by zoonotic vector-borne pathogens. This study explores the potential implications of climate change for one such pathogen, (the causative agent of human Lyme disease), in ticks of the far-western United States. Nymphal tick infection prevalence and density are compared against several metrics for climate, while also accounting for habitat fragmentation, mammalian species richness, and rodent tick burden to eliminate confounding variables.

The roles of habitat isolation, landscape connectivity and host community in tick-borne pathogen ecology.

Habitat loss and forest fragmentation are often linked to increased pathogen transmission, but the extent to which habitat isolation and landscape connectivity affect disease dynamics through movement of disease vectors and reservoir hosts has not been well examined. Tick-borne diseases are the most prevalent vector-borne diseases in the United States and on the West Coast, is one of the most epidemiologically important vectors. We investigated the impacts of habitat fragmentation on pathogens transmitted by and sought to disentangle the effects of wildlife communities and landscape metrics predictive of pathogen diversity, prevalence and distribution.