Environmental drivers of Ixodes ricinus tick population dynamics: mechanistic modelling using longitudinal field surveys and climate data

Ixodes ricinus is the primary vector for Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis across Europe. However, the environmental drivers of the tick's complex life cycle have not been quantified with real-world data, making it challenging to incorporate tick demography into tick-borne disease transmission models. To address this gap, we fitted a mechanistic model to a detailed 10-year longitudinal dataset from four sites in Northern France, where I. ricinus is abundant and Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis have been reported for decades. By incorporating key demographic processes and the influence of environmental conditions on these processes, our model estimated oviposition, hatching, and moulting rates across a range of temperature or saturation deficit, as well as questing and vertebrate host contact rates. In the studied tick population, moulting peaked at 14.2 °C (95 %HDI: 12.5-16.1 °C), substantially lower than commonly suggested by laboratory-based studies, whereas oviposition and hatching peaked at 24.4 °C (95 %HDI: 10.9-27.2 °C) and 24.7 °C (95 %HDI: 17.8-27.2 °C), respectively. Furthermore, the parameter scaling the empirical baseline vertebrate host contact rates was found to vary significantly between the four study sites, with one site presenting up to 2.90 (95 %HDI: 2.15-3.86) times higher contact rates than the other three sites. Additionally, for ticks overwintering through diapause, moulting in spring more accurately matched the predominantly unimodal questing patterns observed, compared to moulting in summer. Finally, model projections under pessimistic climate change scenarios indicated decreasing tick abundance trends over the next two decades, while no significant decrease was predicted under moderate scenarios. This study provides a foundation for models of I. ricinus-borne pathogen transmission and can be adapted to other Ixodidae populations of public health significance.