The iEcoLab has published a new paper titled “Invasive wineberry influences tick-borne disease dynamics across spatial scales.” The authors, Dr. Payton Phillips and Dr. Jocelyn Behm, use a multiscale approach to examine how urbanization and wineberry affect ticks, their hosts, and pathogen prevalence.
As the first study to investigate the impact of wineberry, they found that tick-borne pathogens were more prevalent in forest plots invaded by wineberry. The dense understory created by wineberry provides habitat for the small mammals that host ticks, potentially increasing opportunities for disease transmission.
Naturalist Adam Haritan, from the YouTube channel Learn Your Land, recently uploaded a video highlighting the key findings of the paper. The video educates their viewers on the links between wineberry and tick-borne diseases.
These results are important for the management of wineberry and the development of urban public health strategies.
The video can be viewed above or at this link, and the paper can be found here.
Phillips, PM & JE Behm. 2026. Invasive wineberry influences tick-borne disease dynamics across spatial scales. Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases, 17(1): 102598.