Recent increases in the incidence and geographic range of tick-borne diseases in North America are linked to the range expansion of medically important tick species, including , , and Passive tick surveillance programs have been highly successful in collecting information on tick distribution, seasonality, host-biting activity, and pathogen infection prevalence. These have demonstrated the power of citizen or community science participation to collect country-wide, epidemiologically relevant data in a resource-efficient manner. This study examined tick observations from the online image-based biological recording platform iNaturalist to evaluate its use as an effective tool for monitoring the distributions of , , , and in the United States and Canada. The distribution and seasonality of iNaturalist tick observations were found to accurately represent those of the studied species. County-level iNaturalist tick occurrence data showed good agreement with other data sources in documented areas of and establishment, and highlighted numerous previously unreported counties with iNaturalist observations of these species. This study supports the use of iNaturalist data as a highly cost-effective passive tick surveillance method that can complement existing surveillance strategies to update tick distributions and identify new areas of tick establishment.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects13050404 | DOI Listing |
Sci Total Environ
January 2025
Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Assessing future snow cover changes is challenging because the high spatial resolution required is typically unavailable from climate models. This study, therefore, proposes an alternative approach to estimating snow changes by developing a super-spatial-resolution downscaling model of snow depth (SD) for Japan using a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based method, and by downscaling an ensemble of models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) dataset. After assessing the coherence of the observed reference SD dataset with independent observations, we leveraged it to train the CNN downscaling model; following its evaluation, we applied the trained model to CMIP6 climate simulations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlants (Basel)
January 2025
Institute for Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Benátská 2, 12900 Prague, Czech Republic.
Species are disappearing worldwide, and changes in climate and land use are commonly assumed to be the most important causes. Organisms are counteracting the negative effects of environmental factors on their survival by evolving various defence strategies, which positively affect their fitness. Here, the question addressed is: can evolution shape these defence strategies so that they positively affect the fitness of an organism? This question is complex and depends on the taxa and environmental factors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlants (Basel)
January 2025
Key Laboratory of Ecological Safety and Sustainable Development in Arid Lands, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China.
Alpine meadows are vital ecosystems on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, significantly contributing to water conservation and climate regulation. This study examines the energy flux patterns and their driving factors in the alpine meadows of the Qilian Mountains, focusing on how the meteorological variables of net radiation (), air temperature, vapor pressure deficit (), wind speed (), and soil water content () influence sensible heat flux () and latent heat flux (). Using the Bowen ratio energy balance method, we monitored energy changes during the growing and non-growing seasons from 2022 to 2023.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlants (Basel)
January 2025
Department of Turf Science and Engineering, College of Grassland Science and Technology, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611130, China.
White clover () is an excellent perennial cold-season ground-cover plant for municipal landscaping and urban greening. It is, therefore, widely distributed and utilized throughout the world. However, poor salt tolerance greatly limits its promotion and application.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPathogens
January 2025
Department of Aquatic Animal Disease, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Bursa Uludag University, Bursa 16059, Türkiye.
Consuming raw or undercooked mussels can lead to gastroenteritis and septicemia due to contamination. This study analyzed the prevalence, density, species diversity, and molecular traits of spp. in 48 fresh raw wild mussels (FRMs) and 48 ready-to-eat stuffed mussels (RTE-SMs) through genome analysis, assessing health risks.
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