Small mammals, ticks, and the ecology of zoonotic diseases in a changing world
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22355091Keywords:
Rodents, Ticks, Zoonotic Disease, Climate Change, Land-Use Change, AnatoliaAbstract
Abstract
Rodents host an outstanding array of zoonotic pathogens transmitted directly or via ectoparasite vectors, particularly ticks. This review synthesizes the current knowledge on rodent–ectoparasite associations and the tick-borne and directly transmitted pathogens they carry, with particular emphasis on how climate change, land-use change, and urbanization are reshaping these systems. Our taxonomic scope is limited to Rodentia as reservoir hosts and to a global perspective, with particular emphasis on scattered literature from Anatolia, Türkiye, and the larger Middle Eastern and Caucasian region. Ectoparasite burdens on rodents exhibit regular yet complex patterns driven by host aggregation, seasonality, and land-use intensity, although land-use impacts are not ubiquitous in their direction. Surveillance of Hantavirus, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, several tick-borne bacterial genera, and Babesia species is geographically uneven. Anatolia, in particular, has generated a substantial body of recent genetic data relative to its still limited total coverage. We explore the unresolved question as to whether host community diversity dilutes or amplifies diseases risk, concluding that host identity, rather than diversity per se, best predicts the probability of pathogen transmission. Host-trait-based predictive models identified the Middle East and Central Asia indicate a high likelihood of undiscovered rodent reservoir diversity, which is partially supported by recent field data from Mongolia. Systematic analyses of wildlife pathogen data from Europe revealed that, even in a well-resourced country, only 4% of potential host–pathogen associations have been examined, suggesting the knowledge gap is likely to be substantially greater in regions with more limited surveillance capacity. We conclude by proposing concrete recommendations for establishing an integrated, multi-pathogen rodent surveillance network across Anatolia and the southern Caucasus. This region remains understudied. Current predictive models nonetheless identify it as disproportionately important for understanding future zoonotic emergence.
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JWB applies the 