Time Is Ticking: Unveiling Tick-Borne Disease Hazards in the Face of Biodiversity Loss and Climatic Change

Infectious diseases are emerging at unprecedented rates, threatening human health, economies, and biodiversity conservation. Simultaneously, global biodiversity loss and climate change present major challenges for the 21st century. While previous studies have explored how biodiversity loss and climate change may impact infectious disease risk, their interactive effects have rarely been considered. I aim to examine how climate affects biodiversity-disease relationships in a tick-borne pathogen (TBP) system in Kenya. Of all arthropod vectors, ticks spread the largest variety of pathogenic micro-organisms and are highly dependent on both climate and wildlife communities, providing an excellent model to study interactive effects of biodiversity and climate on disease risk.