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Pattern of Tick Aggregation on Mice: Larger Than Expected Distribution Tail Enhances the Spread of Tick-Borne Pathogens

The spread of tick-borne pathogens represents an important threat to human and animal health in many parts of Eurasia. Here, we analysed a 9-year time series of Ixodes ricinus ticks feeding on Apodemus flavicollis mice (main reservoir-competent host for tick-borne encephalitis, TBE) sampled in Trent...

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Autores principales: Ferreri, Luca, Giacobini, Mario, Bajardi, Paolo, Bertolotti, Luigi, Bolzoni, Luca, Tagliapietra, Valentina, Rizzoli, Annapaola, Rosà, Roberto
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4230730/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25393293
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003931
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author Ferreri, Luca
Giacobini, Mario
Bajardi, Paolo
Bertolotti, Luigi
Bolzoni, Luca
Tagliapietra, Valentina
Rizzoli, Annapaola
Rosà, Roberto
author_facet Ferreri, Luca
Giacobini, Mario
Bajardi, Paolo
Bertolotti, Luigi
Bolzoni, Luca
Tagliapietra, Valentina
Rizzoli, Annapaola
Rosà, Roberto
author_sort Ferreri, Luca
collection PubMed
description The spread of tick-borne pathogens represents an important threat to human and animal health in many parts of Eurasia. Here, we analysed a 9-year time series of Ixodes ricinus ticks feeding on Apodemus flavicollis mice (main reservoir-competent host for tick-borne encephalitis, TBE) sampled in Trentino (Northern Italy). The tail of the distribution of the number of ticks per host was fitted by three theoretical distributions: Negative Binomial (NB), Poisson-LogNormal (PoiLN), and Power-Law (PL). The fit with theoretical distributions indicated that the tail of the tick infestation pattern on mice is better described by the PL distribution. Moreover, we found that the tail of the distribution significantly changes with seasonal variations in host abundance. In order to investigate the effect of different tails of tick distribution on the invasion of a non-systemically transmitted pathogen, we simulated the transmission of a TBE-like virus between susceptible and infective ticks using a stochastic model. Model simulations indicated different outcomes of disease spreading when considering different distribution laws of ticks among hosts. Specifically, we found that the epidemic threshold and the prevalence equilibria obtained in epidemiological simulations with PL distribution are a good approximation of those observed in simulations feed by the empirical distribution. Moreover, we also found that the epidemic threshold for disease invasion was lower when considering the seasonal variation of tick aggregation.
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spelling pubmed-42307302014-11-18 Pattern of Tick Aggregation on Mice: Larger Than Expected Distribution Tail Enhances the Spread of Tick-Borne Pathogens Ferreri, Luca Giacobini, Mario Bajardi, Paolo Bertolotti, Luigi Bolzoni, Luca Tagliapietra, Valentina Rizzoli, Annapaola Rosà, Roberto PLoS Comput Biol Research Article The spread of tick-borne pathogens represents an important threat to human and animal health in many parts of Eurasia. Here, we analysed a 9-year time series of Ixodes ricinus ticks feeding on Apodemus flavicollis mice (main reservoir-competent host for tick-borne encephalitis, TBE) sampled in Trentino (Northern Italy). The tail of the distribution of the number of ticks per host was fitted by three theoretical distributions: Negative Binomial (NB), Poisson-LogNormal (PoiLN), and Power-Law (PL). The fit with theoretical distributions indicated that the tail of the tick infestation pattern on mice is better described by the PL distribution. Moreover, we found that the tail of the distribution significantly changes with seasonal variations in host abundance. In order to investigate the effect of different tails of tick distribution on the invasion of a non-systemically transmitted pathogen, we simulated the transmission of a TBE-like virus between susceptible and infective ticks using a stochastic model. Model simulations indicated different outcomes of disease spreading when considering different distribution laws of ticks among hosts. Specifically, we found that the epidemic threshold and the prevalence equilibria obtained in epidemiological simulations with PL distribution are a good approximation of those observed in simulations feed by the empirical distribution. Moreover, we also found that the epidemic threshold for disease invasion was lower when considering the seasonal variation of tick aggregation. Public Library of Science 2014-11-13 /pmc/articles/PMC4230730/ /pubmed/25393293 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003931 Text en © 2014 Ferreri et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ferreri, Luca
Giacobini, Mario
Bajardi, Paolo
Bertolotti, Luigi
Bolzoni, Luca
Tagliapietra, Valentina
Rizzoli, Annapaola
Rosà, Roberto
Pattern of Tick Aggregation on Mice: Larger Than Expected Distribution Tail Enhances the Spread of Tick-Borne Pathogens
title Pattern of Tick Aggregation on Mice: Larger Than Expected Distribution Tail Enhances the Spread of Tick-Borne Pathogens
title_full Pattern of Tick Aggregation on Mice: Larger Than Expected Distribution Tail Enhances the Spread of Tick-Borne Pathogens
title_fullStr Pattern of Tick Aggregation on Mice: Larger Than Expected Distribution Tail Enhances the Spread of Tick-Borne Pathogens
title_full_unstemmed Pattern of Tick Aggregation on Mice: Larger Than Expected Distribution Tail Enhances the Spread of Tick-Borne Pathogens
title_short Pattern of Tick Aggregation on Mice: Larger Than Expected Distribution Tail Enhances the Spread of Tick-Borne Pathogens
title_sort pattern of tick aggregation on mice: larger than expected distribution tail enhances the spread of tick-borne pathogens
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4230730/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25393293
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003931
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