Sanne Ruyts

Natuurpunt · Natuurpunt Studie (Research Department)

‘Animals under wheels’ is a citizen science driven project that has collected almost 90,000 roadkill records from Flanders, Belgium, mainly between 2008 and 2020. However, until now, the platform and results have never been presented comprehensively to the scientific community and we highlight strengths and challenges of this system. Data collectio...

To address the decline in biodiversity, international cooperation in monitoring of threatened species is needed. Citizen science can play a crucial role in achieving this challenging goal, but most citizen science projects have been established at national or regional scales. Here we report on the establishment and initial findings of the European...

Background Elucidating which wildlife species significantly contribute to the maintenance of Ixodes ricinus populations and the enzootic cycles of the pathogens they transmit is imperative in understanding the driving forces behind the emergence of tick-borne diseases. Here, we aimed to quantify the relative contribution of four mustelid species in...

Research within the SPEEDY-network has shown that urbanisation has an effect on the parasite and symbiont community. In a few cases urbanisation was associated with a reduction in the number of micro-organisms associated with the host. Nevertheless there are species specific responses: particular species increase and others decrease in the city. Th...

An increasing number of studies have investigated the consequences of biodiversity loss for the occurrence of vector-borne diseases such as Lyme borreliosis, the most common tick-borne disease in the northern hemisphere. As host species differ in their ability to transmit the Lyme borreliosis bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi s.l. to ticks, increased h...

Background: The tick Ixodes ricinus has considerable impact on the health of humans and other terrestrial animals because it transmits several tick-borne pathogens (TBPs) such as B. burgdorferi (sensu lato), which cause Lyme borreliosis (LB). Small forest patches of agricultural landscapes provide many ecosystem services and also the disservice of...

Eurasian red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) are common hosts of ixodid ticks and could thus carry tick-borne disease agents. The relative contribution of the red squirrel, a medium-sized rodent species, to the transmission dynamics of tick-borne pathogens in Europe yet remains unclear. We analysed spleen and liver samples from 45 dead squirrels colle...

Background European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) are urban dwellers and host both Ixodes ricinus and Ixodes hexagonus. These ticks transmit several zoonotic pathogens like Borrelia burgdorferi (sensu lato), Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Rickettsia helvetica, Borrelia miyamotoi and “Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis”. It is unclear to what extent h...

In the northern temperate zone, the highest Ixodid tick densities are found in forests. However, tick densities and Borrelia prevalence strongly vary from one forest location to another. Multiple drivers underlie this variability. In this chapter we provide more information on the way forest managers can influence three important risk determining f...

Lyme disease is caused by bacteria of the Borrelia burgdorferi genospecies complex and transmitted by Ixodid ticks. In North America only one pathogenic genospecies occurs, in Europe there are several. According to the dilution effect hypothesis (DEH), formulated in North America, nymphal infection prevalence (NIP) decreases with increasing host di...

Riverine fish that colonize reservoirs can have a strong influence on the ecology of these systems. To understand this impact, it is important to know what they feed upon. In the reservoirs, they are exposed to different food sources compared to the riverine environment. We studied diet of 404 specimens belonging to two species of the riverine cypr...