San Francisco State University San Francisco, California
Over the last 20 years, the increased risk of tick-borne diseases in the United States has been profound and significant. Many potential causes have been proposed including land use change and host community changes. While these drivers have been examined extensively in the eastern United States, the factors governing the maintenance of transmission of tick-borne disease in the western United States has been far less studied or understood. In this study, we sought to characterize the impact of habitat fragmentation and host community composition on tick-borne pathogen transmission by examining pathogen prevalence along a gradient of habitat fragmentation and associated host community composition in the far-western United States. We focused on pathogens that are transmitted by the western black-legged tick, Ixodes pacificus, and quantified both the prevalence and richness of various pathogens including the Lyme disease pathogen, Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia miyamotoi. We found that host species richness affects both disease prevalence and richness.
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