Interacting effects of wildlife loss and climate on ticks and tick-borne disease.

Both large-wildlife loss and climatic changes can independently influence the prevalence and distribution of zoonotic disease. Given growing evidence that wildlife loss often has stronger community-level effects in low-productivity areas, we hypothesized that these perturbations would have interactive effects on disease risk. We experimentally tested this hypothesis by measuring tick abundance and the prevalence of tick-borne pathogens ( and spp) within long-term, size-selective, large-herbivore exclosures replicated across a precipitation gradient in East Africa.