Climate-driven livestock management shifts and tick populations.

Abstract Climate change can affect all aspects of the tick life cycle, from altering host distributions to modulating tick development and survival. This expert opinion focuses on how humans can greatly affect tick populations via livestock management. This is likely to occur through at least three pathways: (i) by altering host abundance and composition; (ii) via habitat modification due to grazing and trampling; and (iii) by altering tick mortality via tick-control methods. Thus, climate-driven changes to livestock management can profoundly alter tick populations, especially in regions such as eastern and southern Africa, where high livestock density and worsening climate changes are coupled with high tick diversity and abundance.