Description
To assess the likely risk from ticks and tick-borne pathogens, understanding the seasonal pattern of tick feeding and the environmental constraints that determine their activity is crucial. Tick abundance, weather, habitat suitability, host abundance (particularly deer) and exposure are all important to varying extents. However, disentangling the roles of each of these factors is difficult. In this talk I will briefly outline the key factors that determine spatial and temporal patterns of tick abundance and, in relation to a study of ticks feeding on dogs in a semi-urban park, I will highlight the critical importance of exposure in determining tick-bite risk.
Richard Wall is Professor of Zoology at the University of Bristol. He teaches entomology and parasitology to biology and veterinary undergraduates and postgraduates and heads a research group which works on a wide range of ectoparasites of veterinary importance, particularly ticks, flies, lice, mange mites and flies. His research ranges widely from fundamental studies of taxonomy and physiology, through to field population ecology and farm-level investigations of the application of sustainable control technologies.
Eric Morgan graduated in veterinary medicine and zoology from the University of Cambridge in 1997 and then completed a PhD in parasite ecology and epidemiology at the University of Warwick. He has been at the University of Bristol since 2002, and is currently Reader in Veterinary Parasitology. Research interests focus on the epidemiology of parasitic infections in domestic and wild animals: especially, using predictive modelling to integrate climate and host factors and devise sustainable control strategies. The emerging lungworm of dogs, Angiostrongylus vasorum, has been a major research focus for the past ten years, leading to more than 20 papers on its biology, transmission and epidemiology in definitive and intermediate hosts.