Ayres Abstracts

Winter, J. M., T. F. Partridge, D. Wallace, E. R. Dekker, J. W. Chipman, M. Ayres, and E. C. Osterberg. 2020. Modelling the sensitivity of Blacklegged Ticks (Acari: Ixodidae) to temperature and land cover in the Northeastern United States. Journal of Medical Entomology https://doi.org/10.1093/jme/tjaa179

Abstract. The prevalence of Lyme disease and other tickborne diseases is dramatically increasing across the United States.  While the rapid rise in Lyme disease is clear, the causes of it are not.  Modeling Ixodes scapularis Say, the primary Lyme disease vector in the eastern US, presents an opportunity to disentangle the drivers of increasing Lyme disease, including climate, land cover, and host populations.  We improved and evaluated a recently developed compartment model of ordinary differential equations to simulate I. scapularis growth, abundance, and infection with Borrelia burgdorferi.  We then applied this model to analyze the sensitivity of simulated I. scapularis dynamics across temperature and land cover in the northeastern United States.  Specifically, we ran an ensemble of 232 simulations with temperatures from Hanover, New Hampshire and Storrs, Connecticut, and land cover distributions from Hanover and Cardigan in New Hampshire, and Windsor and Danielson in Connecticut.  Simulations of I. scapularis abundance are more sensitive to temperature than land cover, with the warmer Storrs climate significantly increasing the number of questing I. scapularis at all growth stages.  While there is some variation in modeled populations of I. scapularis infected with B. burgdorferi across land cover distributions, it is insignificant due to the relatively homogenous number of hosts and proportion of hosts that are competent to serve as reservoirs for B. burgdorferi among land cover classifications. 

Keywords: Lyme disease, ecology, modeling, public health entomology, Ixodidae

 

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