
Department of Zoology
Poznań University of Life Sciences

Effect of ecological and environmental factors on the interaction between ticks and tits Paridae
Principal Investigator
Joanna T. Białas
Investigators from PULS
Funding Agency
National Agency for Academic Exchange
Programme name
The Iwanowska Programme
Grant No.
PPN/IWA/2019/1/00093
2021-2022
Grant duration
Project website
The goal of this project is to identify the ecological and environmental factors involved in tick-host interactions. We will study how ecological factors regulating host population numbers and habitat choice affect the population sizes of questing ticks. We will focus on the tick Ixodes ricinus and its bird host great tit Parus major. First, we will quantify variation in ecology, host tick numbers to reveal the spatiotemporal distribution of questing ticks, and ticks on great tits, as well as the spatiotemporal distribution of ecological factors hypothesized to drive variation in host and tick population sizes. Second, we will study the ecological factors impacting questing tick numbers and the ecological sources of variation in population numbers of hosts (great tits), ticks (questing ticks, and ticks carried by hosts), and their interactions. Finally, we will reveal whether ecological factors influencing host habitat selection also affect tick burden in hosts, and in turn numbers of questing ticks, and how host phenotypic traits (e.g. behaviour) influences this relation.
Project conducted under prof. Niels Dingemanse supervision at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.