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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.

Project Gallery

ul. Wojska Polskiego 71C, 60-625 Poznań, Poland

+48 61 848 76 49

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