#Santa clara county lab tick lyme test drivers#
#Santa clara county lab tick lyme test professional#

Various related datasets can be paired with the NEON tick and tick pathogen data to either expand the spatiotemporal scope of the records or provide a rich ecosystem-scale context to the observations. These issues highlight the importance of publishing open access standardized tick datasets.

Furthermore, several historical tick records have been lost because of incomplete spatiotemporal, quantitative or life stage information, and whole datasets have been lost owing to obsolete storage methods. A recent survey of state and local public health and vector control agencies found that fewer than half used active tick surveillance methods, and most of those were only measuring tick presence. Unfortunately, few existing datasets achieve this standard and gaps in data availability have hampered attempts to build a synthetic understanding of the complex interactions driving variations in tick-borne disease risk. This dataset meets the gold standard of tick surveillance by providing information on the distribution and abundance of tick vectors, as well as the prevalence of tick-borne pathogens.

This unique dataset represents a key resource for public health and ecology researchers by providing multiscale, long-term data collected using a standardized sampling framework, alongside co-located measurements of various related abiotic and biotic variables. There is a growing body of literature on the ecological consequences of parasitism, and the role of ticks remains open for exploration. For instance, parasites are known to alter the behavior or mortality of their hosts with cascading effects on community dynamics. In addition to their dynamic responsiveness to abiotic and biotic changes, ticks themselves may help to shape ecological interactions. Ticks also respond to land-use change via its effects on the availability of suitable microhabitats and host community composition. As ectotherms that spend most of their lifecycle detached from their hosts, ticks are highly sensitive to changes in abiotic factors such as humidity and temperature. Ticks encounter many host species, creating complex interaction networks that highlight their ecological connectivity and sensitivity to perturbations.

#Santa clara county lab tick lyme test drivers#

These data will enable multiscale analyses to better understand how drivers of tick dynamics and pathogen prevalence may shift with climate or land-use change.Īs well as their importance for public health, ticks are effective sentinels of ecosystem changes, and they also affect ecological interactions.

#Santa clara county lab tick lyme test professional#

Ticks are identified and enumerated by a professional taxonomist, and a subset of nymphs are PCR-tested for various tick-borne pathogens. Ticks are collected using drag or flag methods multiple times in a growing season at 46 terrestrial sites across the USA. Here, we describe data collected by the National Ecological Observatory Network on tick abundance, diversity and pathogen infection. Ticks are ectotherms with multi-host lifecycles, which makes them sensitive to changes in the physical environment and the ecological community. However, the relative importance of these and other potential drivers remain poorly understood within this complex disease system. Cases of tick-borne diseases have been steadily increasing in the USA, owing in part to tick range expansion, land cover and associated host population changes, and habitat fragmentation.