Impacts of plant invasions on tick-borne disease risk

Under global change, plant invasions may alter tick-borne disease (TBD) transmission. The direction and magnitude of changes in TBD risk resulting from invasions remain poorly understood because research has often been species-specific or insufficient to quantify mechanisms. In this overview, we describe how invasive plant functional traits can mediate microclimates, how tick survival and abundance vary under altered environmental conditions created by invasive plants, and how invasive plants can impact blood meal host activity and pathogen prevalence. These findings are synthesized within a One Health framework that considers climate, landscape, and disturbance to ultimately predict TBD risk. Finally, we discuss range expansion of ticks and pathogens, spatial and temporal research scales, and modeling approaches for predicting TBD risk amidst global change. We highlight how plant invasions and climate change can impact ticks, hosts, and pathogens, and we identify research needs to improve models of TBDs in a changing world.