Tick-borne pathogens : the interplay of climate, fire, and prairie reconstruction
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Infectious diseases cause 37 percent of all deaths worldwide. Global infectious disease outbreaks have increased significantly in number, diversity, and richness since 1980. Ticks are responsible for nearly 95 percent of all vector-borne diseases reported in the US. Ticks on open grasslands, such as tallgrass prairies, are highly susceptible to climatic factors such as temperature and humidity. Tallgrass prairies were historically maintained by fire, and this management practice remains in use today. More recently, prescribed burning has become a promising tick-control measure as it can be applied broadly at a landscape scale, is relatively cost-efficient, and has numerous, well-accepted ecosystem benefits. My research aim was two-fold, quantify the effects of prairie reconstruction and management on TBDs and determine which climate variables can meaningfully model TBD cases. I analyzed the microbiome of ticks collected from two study sites from 2020-2022 to determine the relationship between restoration age, time since fire, and various climate variables to determine their effects on Francisella spp., Rickettsia spp., and Ehrlichia spp. The top model for Francisella, Rickettsia, and Ehrlichia at both sites was predicted by restoration age or time since the last burn of the plot, the interaction of restoration age or time since burn and the climate variables, the interaction of maximum temperature from the previous summer and average PDSI for the sampling year, and tick species. These models outperformed the other models that only considered restoration age/time since burn or the climate variables separately. My results demonstrate that combining management practices and climatic variables is more effective at describing tick pathogen presence than either factor considered alone. My results also illustrate the importance of considering individual genera of pathogens in analyses, as their presence can be affected differently by the same environmental factors.
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M.S.