Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2013

DOI

10.3934/mbe.2013.10.625

Publication Title

Mathematical Biosciences & Engineering

Volume

10

Issue

3

Pages

625-635

Abstract

Ticks and tick-borne diseases have been on the move throughout the United State over the past twenty years. We use an agent-based model, TICKSIM, to identify the key parameters that determine the success of invasion of the tick and if that is successful, the success of the tick-borne pathogen. We find that if an area has competent hosts, an initial population of ten ticks is predicted to always establish a new population. The establishment of the tick-borne pathogen depends on three parameters: the initial prevalence in the ten founding ticks, the probability that a tick infects the longer-lived hosts and the probability that a tick infects the shorter lived hosts. These results indicate that the transmission rates to hosts in the newly established area can be used to predict the potential risk of disease to humans.

Comments

NOTE: This is the author's pre-print version of a work that was published in Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering. The final version was published as:

Gaff, H., & Nadolny, R. (2013). Identifying requirements for the invasion of a tick species and tick-borne pathogen through TICKSIM. Mathematical Biosciences & Engineering, 10(3), 625-635. doi:10.3934/mbe.2013.10.625

Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3934/mbe.2013.10.625

Original Publication Citation

Gaff, H., & Nadolny, R. (2013). Identifying requirements for the invasion of a tick species and tick-borne pathogen through TICKSIM. Mathematical Biosciences & Engineering, 10(3), 625-635. doi:10.3934/mbe.2013.10.625

ORCID

0000-0002-4034-2684 (Gaff)

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