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Host infection and community composition predict vector burden

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Abstract

Lyme disease is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in the United States, yet critical gaps remain in our understanding of tick and host interactions that shape disease dynamics. Rodents such as deer mice (Peromyscus spp.) and dusky-footed woodrats (Neotoma fuscipes) are key reservoirs for Borrelia burgdorferi, the etiological bacterium of Lyme disease, and can vary greatly in abundance between habitats. The aggregation of Ixodes pacificus, the western black-legged tick, on rodent hosts is often assumed to be constant across various habitats and not dependent on the rodent or predator communities; however, this is rarely tested. The factors that determine tick burdens on key reservoir hosts are important in estimating Lyme disease risk because larger tick burdens can amplify pathogen transmission. This study is the first to empirically measure I. pacificus larval burdens on competent reservoir hosts as a function of community factors such as rodent diversity, predator diversity, and questing tick abundance. Rodents were live trapped at oak woodland sites to collect tick burdens and tissue samples to test for infection with Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato. We found that N. fuscipes tick burdens were negatively correlated with predator diversity, but positively correlated with questing I. pacificus larvae. In addition, rodent hosts that were infected with B. burgdorferi sensu lato tend to have higher burdens of larval ticks. These results demonstrate that tick burdens can be shaped by variability between individuals, species, and the broader host community with consequences for transmission and prevalence of tick-borne pathogens.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Jessica Kwan, Johnathan Bertram, Kerry O’Connor, Tiffany Hong, Shivang Mehta, Lilianna Cerna, Phil Galicinao, Sukhman Sidhu, Rachel Grigich, Parker Kaye, Eric Seredian, Thor Olsen, Laura Hughes, Adrienne Almarinez, Adrian Barrera-Velasquez, and Grace Shaw for their help processing and collecting samples. We would like to thank Edward Connor for his statistical analysis advice. We would like to acknowledge that this research was conducted on Native lands of: Ramaytush, Ohlone, Chochenya and Wappo. We thank the City of Belmont, California State Parks, East Bay Municipal Water District, Marin Open Space Trust, San Mateo County Parks, Sonoma Regional Parks, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space and the Town of Los Gatos for access to conduct research in their parks.

Funding

This research was funded by grants from CSUPERB, the Bay Area Lyme Disease Foundation, and NSF grants #1427772, 1745411, and 1750037 to AS, Sigma-Xi to AL and NIH MARC: T34-GM008574, NIH MBRS-RISE: R25-GM059298 to JS. Additionally, this research was funded by the support of the Pacific Southwest Regional Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Diseases funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Cooperative Agreement 1U01CK000516) to SS and AS.

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Contributions

AL, SS, AC and JS collaboratively conducted field work and processed the samples, JS and AS analyzed data and wrote the manuscript; all authors provided edits of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jordan Salomon.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving animals were in accordance with the ethical standards of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the San Francisco State Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC AU15-06).

Additional information

Communicated by Roland A. Brandl.

This experimental field study documents a positive relationship between larval tick burdens and host-pathogen infection, while predator diversity reduces tick burdens on important reservoir hosts.

Supplementary Information

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Supplementary file1 (DOCX 26 KB)

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Salomon, J., Lawrence, A., Crews, A. et al. Host infection and community composition predict vector burden. Oecologia 196, 305–316 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04851-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-021-04851-9

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