Parasites and wildlife in a changing world: The vector-host- pathogen interaction as a learning case

Rizzoli, Annapaola; Tagliapietra, Valentina; Cagnacci, Francesca; Marini, Giovanni; Arnoldi, Daniele; Rosso, Fausta; Rosà, Roberto

Tick borne pathogens like TBEV are dependent on hosts' movement, on top of their density and distribution, to emerge and persist in new environments. It is through space use and movement that hosts encounter infected questing ticks Stradiotto et al., 2009 ). However, for the tick cycle to be completed, the scales of movement of different hosts shall overlap, so that feeding and questing ticks can be transferred from one host to the other through their presence and movements in their common habitat. Overabundance of secondary hosts, such as deer, may increase tick availability and thus correlate with TBEV occurrence Knap and Avšič-Županc, 2013) , but not necessarily correspond to local TBEV emergence via tick-removal from overlapping competent hosts . In fact, changes in infection hazard can be converted in increased infection risk when a co-occurrence of factors, such as changes in deer abundance and favourable climatic conditions or socio economic drivers, increase exposure of people to infected ticks, as seen in Europe during the last decades (Godfrey and Randolph, 2011; Jaenson et al., 2012 Jaenson et al., , 2018 .