Ticks pose an emerging threat of infectious pathogen transmission in the United States in part due to expanding suitable habitat ranges in the wake of climate change. Active and passive tick surveillance can inform maps of tick distributions to warn the public of their risk of exposure to ticks. In Colorado, widespread active surveillance programs have difficulty due to the state's diverse terrain. However, combining multiple citizen science techniques can create a more accurate representation of tick distribution than any passive surveillance dataset alone. Our study uses county-level tick distribution data from Northern Arizona University, the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, and veterinary surveillance in addition to literature data to assess the distribution of the Rocky Mountain wood tick, Dermacentor andersoni, and the American dog tick, Dermacentor variabilis. We found that D. andersoni for the most part inhabits counties at higher elevations than D. variabilis in Colorado.
Keywords: Citizen science; Dermacentor; Tick surveillance.
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