LTREB Renewal: Acorn pulses and the dynamics of rodents, ticks, and Lyme-disease risk in oak forests

莱姆病每年折磨着成千上万的美国人。 没有疫苗，诊断方法和治疗方法仍然存在问题;避免接触携带疾病的蜱虫是保护公众的主要手段。该项目将确定是什么调节了蜱虫的丰度和携带疾病病原体的蜱虫的比例，提供有关人们何时何地最有可能接触莱姆病的详细信息。 研究人员将继续在美国受影响最严重的地区之一长期收集橡子，蜱虫，小鼠，其他宿主和气候的数据。 通过避免和管理高风险地点和时间，结果将有助于减少疾病负担。该项目将有助于K-12课堂教学，本科教育和广泛的公共教育，通过强有力的合作，研究人员已经在这个十六年的研究过程中开发。公共卫生福利确保了公共媒体对研究的广泛报道。该项目将通过参与研究来培训本科生和研究生以及博士后研究人员。莱姆病的风险可以从过去的橡子产量预测，但新模式和机制的发现使这些预测变得复杂。研究人员将继续对6个橡树林地块进行研究，以收集橡子产量的长期数据;小鼠，花栗鼠，松鼠，幼虫，若虫和成年黑腿蜱的种群动态;蜱感染莱姆病细菌的流行率;以及蜱对特定气候变量的反应。另外五年的数据，包括更广泛的主机丰度，蜱虫负担，资源和气候条件将产生经验基础，构建强大的模型的所有蜱虫生命阶段，探索和重视，以解决生物和非生物驱动的蜱虫种群动态。还将扩展模型，以区分气候变量与宿主丰度和宿主资源对莱姆病风险的影响。将探讨橡子-小鼠-蜱相互作用中突发事件的重要性。虽然大多数年份的高小鼠丰度其次是高若虫丰度，最近的小鼠高峰之后没有若虫高峰。桅杆-老鼠-蜱虫系统的更强大和预测模型需要探索特定的突发事件，这可能是偶发的。橡子生产的长期趋势将进行分析，分解的幅度和时间的桅杆事件的个别物种的模式，由于种子生产的个体差异与整体丰度和人口规模结构的变化的时间变化。幼虫和寄生虫寻找宿主的季节性时间分析将与宿主种群规模的估计相结合，以解释若虫感染率的变化，并提高对这一关键变量的预测。

Lyme disease afflicts hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. There is no vaccine and both diagnostic methods and treatments remain problematic; avoidance of exposure to disease-bearing ticks is the primary means of protecting the public. This project will identify what regulates the abundance of ticks and the proportion of ticks that carry the disease agent, providing detailed knowledge about when and where people are most at risk of exposure to Lyme disease. Researchers will continue long-term collection of data on acorns, ticks, mice, other hosts, and climate in one of the most heavily affected portions of the United States. Results will facilitate reduced burden of disease though avoidance and management of high risk places and times. The project will contribute to K-12 classroom teaching, undergraduate education, and extensive public education through strong collaborations the researchers have developed over the course of this sixteen-year study. Public health benefits ensure widespread coverage of the research by public media. The project will train undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, through their participation in the research. Lyme-disease risk can be predicted from past acorn production, yet the discovery of new patterns and mechanisms complicates these predictions. The investigators will continue research on 6 oak-forest plots to collect long-term data on acorn production; the population dynamics of mice, chipmunks, squirrels, and larval, nymphal, and adult blacklegged ticks; infection prevalence of ticks with Lyme disease bacteria; and tick responses to specific climatic variables. Five additional years of data encompassing a more extensive range of host abundances, tick burdens, resources, and climatic conditions will generate the empirical base for constructing robust models of all tick life stages, questing and attached, to address biotic and abiotic drivers of tick population dynamics. Models will also be extended to distinguish the effects of climatic variables from those of host abundances and host resources on Lyme disease risk. The importance of contingencies in acorn-mouse-tick interactions will be explored. Although most years of high mouse abundance are followed by high nymph abundance, a recent mouse peak was not followed by a nymph peak. More robust and predictive models of the mast-mouse-tick system require the exploration of specific contingencies, which are likely to be episodic. Long-term trends in acorn production will be analyzed to decompose temporal variation in the magnitude and timing of masting events by individual species into patterns due to individual variation in seed production versus changes in overall abundance and population size structure. Analyses of the seasonal timing of host-seeking by larvae and nymphs will be integrated with estimates of host population size to explain variation in nymphal infection prevalence and to improve predictions for this critical variable.