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Updated: Nov 15, 2025

Feeding of Ticks on Animals for Transmission and Xenodiagnosis in Lyme Disease Research
Published on: August 31, 2013
Dynamics of a periodic tick-borne disease model with co-feeding and multiple patches
Xue Zhang1, Bei Sun1, Yijun Lou2
1Department of Mathematics, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110819, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
By extending a mechanistic model for the tick-borne pathogen systemic transmission with the consideration of seasonal climate impacts, host movement as well as the co-feeding transmission route, this paper proposes a novel modeling framework for describing the spatial dynamics of tick-borne diseases. The net reproduction number for tick growth and basic reproduction number for disease transmission are derived, which predict the global dynamics of tick population growth and disease transmission. Numerical simulations not only verify the analytical results, but also characterize the contribution of co-feeding transmission route on disease prevalence in a habitat and the effect of host movement on the spatial spreading of the pathogen.
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