Spatio-temporal pattern of questing Ixodes ricinus tick in Europe

In this work are presented the results concerning the spatio-temporal variation in tick abundance observed in the EDENext study sites where the standardized protocol was followed for two consecutive years (2011 and 2012). A Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) with Negative Binomial Error to investigate the effect of Country, Year and Habitat type on the total number of tick collected within EdenNext sites has been applied. The average number of ticks collected in Hungary, Italy and Czech Republic is always lower than those collected in Germany while in Slovakia questing ticks are more abundant than in Germany. Respect to habitat types, questing ticks are always more abundant in natural sites with respect to agricultural while no differences between agricultural and urban sites were found. Finally, questing ticks are less abundant in 2012 with respect to those collected in 2011. However, it has to be remarked that the effect of both habitat type and year is not the same in all countries. In fact the model that includes interaction terms shows a significant effect of both Country:Habitat type and Country:Year terms.