TY  - JOUR
A1  - Cunze, Sarah
A1  - Glock, Gustav
A1  - Kochmann, Judith
A1  - Klimpel, Sven
T1  - Ticks on the move — climate change-induced range shifts of three tick species in Europe: current and future habitat suitability for Ixodes ricinus in comparison with Dermacentor reticulatus and Dermacentor marginatus
T2  - Parasitology research
N2  - Tick-borne diseases are a major health problem worldwide and could become even more important in Europe in the future. Due to changing climatic conditions, ticks are assumed to be able to expand their ranges in Europe towards higher latitudes and altitudes, which could result in an increased occurrence of tick-borne diseases.
There is a great interest to identify potential (new) areas of distribution of vector species in order to assess the future infection risk with vector-borne diseases, improve surveillance, to develop more targeted monitoring program, and, if required, control measures.
Based on an ecological niche modelling approach we project the climatic suitability for the three tick species Ixodes ricinus, Dermacentor reticulatus and Dermacentor marginatus under current and future climatic conditions in Europe. These common tick species also feed on humans and livestock and are vector competent for a number of pathogens.
For niche modelling, we used a comprehensive occurrence data set based on several databases and publications and six bioclimatic variables in a maximum entropy approach. For projections, we used the most recent IPCC data on current and future climatic conditions including four different scenarios of socio-economic developments.
Our models clearly support the assumption that the three tick species will benefit from climate change with projected range expansions towards north-eastern Europe and wide areas in central Europe with projected potential co-occurrence.
A higher tick biodiversity and locally higher abundances might increase the risk of tick-borne diseases, although other factors such as pathogen prevalence and host abundances are also important.
KW  - Ecological niche modelling
KW  - Species distribution modelling
KW  - Range expansion
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/69596
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-695966
SN  - 1432-1955
N1  - Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
VL  - 121
IS  - 8
SP  - 2241
EP  - 2252
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin ; Heidelberg
ER  -