The talk was entitled, “Do small mammals ‘compete’ for ticks?”.

I made the argument, based on some simple analyses of tick burden data from an experiment in 2011 (!), that when, say, chipmunks are added to a fragment, they reduce the number of larvae feeding on mice by a small number, but that number is sufficient to offset the number fed by the chipmunk. In other words, adding chipmunks (or likely other species) would be expected to reduce the overall density of infected nymphs the next year. The slides are below. Now just need to write the dang paper!

Coolest part: my college ecology professor, the one who made me want to become an ecologist, was in the audience! Thanks, for coming and saying such nice things Mark!

ESA2017_Burdens