Predicting the potential global distribution of Ixodes pacificus under climate change

RESEARCH ARTICLE Predicting the potential global distribution of Ixodes pacificus under climate change Fengfeng LiID1, Qunzheng Mu2☯, Delong Ma2☯, Qunhong Wu3* 1 School of Public Health, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang, Shandong, People’s Republic of China, 2 State Key Laboratory of Infectious Diseases Prevention and Control, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, 3 Department of Social Medicine, Health Management College, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * wuqunhong@163.com Abstract In order to predict the global potential distribution range of Ixodes pacificus (I. pacificus) under different climate scenario models in the future, analyze the major climate factors affecting its distribution, and provide references for the transformation of passive vector sur- veillance into active vector surveillance, the maximum entropy model (MaxEnt) was used in this study to estimate the global potential distribution range of I. pacificus under historical cli- mate scenarios and different future climate scenarios. The global distribution data of I. paci- ficus were screened by ENMtools and ArcGIS 10.8 software, and a total of 563 distribution data of I. pacificus were obtained. Maxent 3.4.1 and R 4.0.3 were used to screen climate variables according to the contribution rate of environmental variables, knife cutting method

and correlation analysis of variables. R 4.0.3 was used to calculate model regulation fre- quency doubling and feature combination to adjust MaxEnt parameters. The model results showed that the training omission rate was in good agreement with the theoretical omission rate, and the area under ROC curve (AUC) value of the model was 0.978. Among the included environmental variables, the Tmin2 (minimum temperature in February) and Prec1 (precipitation in January) contributed the most to the model, providing more effective infor- mation for the distribution of I. pacificus. MaxEnt model revealed that the distribution range of I. pacificus was dynamically changing. The main potential suitable areas are distributed in North America, South America, Europe, Oceania and Asia. Under the future climate sce- nario model, the potential suitable areas show a downward trend, but the countries and regions ieeeeeeenvolved in the suitable areas do not change much. Therefore, the invasion risk of the potential suitable area of I. pacificus should be paid attention to. Introduction Ixodes pacificus (I. pacificus), also known as the western blacklegged tick, is occurs mainly in western North America. It can carry Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto and Borrelia miyamotoi and other zoonotic pathogens are major vectors of Lyme disease PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309367 August 27, 2024 1 / 18 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Li F, Mu Q, Ma D, Wu Q (2024) Predicting

the potential global distribution of Ixodes pacificus under climate change. PLoS ONE 19(8): e0309367. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309367 Editor: Shawky M. Aboelhadid, Beni Suef University Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, EGYPT Received: May 7, 2024 Accepted: August 11, 2024 Published: August 27, 2024 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309367 Copyright: © 2024 Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.