Dissertation Research: Hosts vs. Habitat: Effects of Forestry Practice on the Abundance of Amblyomma Americanum (Acari: Ixodidae) in Missouri

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Insects and other arthropods that transmit disease to humans are commonly referred to as vectors (e.g. ticks and mosquitoes). Human land use is believed to impact the abundance of arthropod vectors of infectious diseases directly via changes in their habitat quality and/or indirectly via changes in the distributions of the hosts that they feed upon. We are examining this relationship in a large-scale experiment investigating different types of forestry practice (clear-cutting, selective-logging, and no harvest) in Ozark forests. Amblyomma americanum (the lone-star tick), an important vector of several emerging diseases, is abundant in these forests. We hypothesized that logging would increase the abundance of A. americanum by increasing the abundance of white-tailed deer, the preeminent host. We found preliminary evidence for both higher tick and deer abundances in logged treatments compared to controls. We have proposed additional research to 1) increase our sampling and examine the direct effects of forestry practice on A. americanum habitat quality, 2) examine the effects of forestry practice on tick-hosts, 3) quantify the contributions of different tick-hosts to A. americanum populations using novel molecular techniques, and 4) analyze the effects of forestry and host management on tick populations via a mathematical model. This research will contribute to our understanding of the impacts of human land use on the abundance of disease vectors, and will provide educational opportunities at the graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 levels.