Antwi-Fordjour Kwadwo, Agusto Folashade B, Kemajou-Brown Isabella
Mathematics and Computer Science, Samford University, Birmingham, AL, USA.
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA.
Math Biosci Eng. 2025 May 13;22(6):1428-1463. doi: 10.3934/mbe.2025054.
Tick-borne illnesses are transmitted to mammals like rodents and deer by infected ticks. These illnesses have shown dramatic increase in recent times, thereby increasing public health risk in the United States. Additionally, these mammals can be impacted by predation and the fear of their predators. In this study, we modeled the lethal and non-lethal effect of predation of the mammals on the dynamics of tick-borne disease using ehrlichiosis as our model disease system. Results of the theoretical analysis of reduced form of the model indicate that the model equilibria are stable when the tick fecundity and mortality rates are not host dependent. Furthermore, predator-induced fear and predator attack rates are two of the significant parameters of the model outputs from the sensitivity analysis carried out. Numerical simulation of the model shows that the combined impact of both lethal and non-lethal predation sets off a cascading chain reaction leading to a corresponding reduction in the prey and tick populations; in particular there are more infected larvae when infected prey population are low and few infected larvae when there are more infected prey. Similar dynamics was observed for the infected nymphs and adult ticks and infected predator population. Furthermore as the fear of the predator increases, the prey population reduces which subsequently lead to a decrease in the tick populations and subsequently disease in the community.
蜱传疾病通过受感染的蜱传播给啮齿动物和鹿等哺乳动物。近年来，这些疾病显著增加，从而增加了美国的公共卫生风险。此外，这些哺乳动物会受到捕食以及对捕食者的恐惧的影响。在本研究中，我们以埃立克体病作为模型疾病系统，对哺乳动物捕食对蜱传疾病动态的致死和非致死效应进行建模。模型简化形式的理论分析结果表明，当蜱的繁殖力和死亡率不依赖宿主时，模型平衡点是稳定的。此外，捕食者引发的恐惧和捕食者攻击率是敏感性分析得出的模型输出的两个重要参数。模型的数值模拟表明，致死和非致死捕食的综合影响引发了连锁反应，导致猎物和蜱种群相应减少；特别是当受感染猎物种群数量低时，感染幼虫更多，而当受感染猎物数量更多时，感染幼虫很少。对于受感染的若虫、成虫蜱以及受感染的捕食者种群，也观察到了类似的动态。此外，随着对捕食者恐惧的增加，猎物种群减少，随后蜱种群减少，进而导致群落中的疾病减少。
