Impacts of plant invasions on tick-borne disease risk

2025 · doi:10.32942/x23d0p
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Abstract

Under global change, plant invasions may alter tick-borne disease (TBD) transmission. The direction and magnitude of changes in TBD risk resulting from invasions remain poorly understood because research has often been species-specific or insufficient to quantify mechanisms. In this overview, we describe how invasive plant functional traits can mediate microclimates, how tick survival and abundance vary under altered environmental conditions created by invasive plants, and how invasive plants can impact blood meal host activity and pathogen prevalence. These findings are synthesized within a One Health framework that considers climate, landscape, and disturbance to ultimately predict TBD risk. Finally, we discuss range expansion of ticks and pathogens, spatial and temporal research scales, and modeling approaches for predicting TBD risk amidst global change. We highlight how plant invasions and climate change can impact ticks, hosts, and pathogens, and we identify research needs to improve models of TBDs in a changing world.
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Abstract

Under global change, plant invasions may alter tick-borne disease (TBD) exposure risk. The direction and magnitude of changes in TBD risk resulting from invasions remain poorly understood because research has often been species-specific or insufficient to quantify mechanisms. In this overview, we describe how invasive plant functional traits can mediate microclimates, how tick survival and abundance vary under altered environmental conditions created by invasive plants, and how invasive plants can impact blood meal host activity and pathogen prevalence. These findings are synthesized within a One Health framework that considers climate, landscape, and disturbance to ultimately predict TBD risk. We then discuss modeling approaches for predicting TBD risk amidst global change, and identify research gaps and future directions, including quantification of invader functional traits, assessment of plant invasion effects on TBD risk, and the potential for plant invasions to facilitate geographic expansions of ticks, hosts, and pathogens. DOI https://doi.org/10.32942/X23D0P Subjects Life Sciences

Keywords

climate change, host habitat, microclimate, Plant invasions, tick-borne disease Dates Published: 2025-01-06 22:59 Last Updated: 2025-10-05 14:09 Older Versions License CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Additional Metadata Conflict of interest statement: None Data and Code Availability Statement: Not applicable Language: English

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