{"id":113485,"date":"2018-03-02T10:34:09","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T15:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=113485"},"modified":"2019-05-17T12:50:20","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T16:50:20","slug":"qa-ben-tonelli-18-creates-first-of-its-kind-model-showing-ticks-dispersed-by-songbirds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/03\/02\/qa-ben-tonelli-18-creates-first-of-its-kind-model-showing-ticks-dispersed-by-songbirds\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Ben Tonelli ’18 creates model showing how songbirds spread ticks"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the summer as I train for Bates cross country, I run over wooded trails, so I\u2019m constantly on the lookout for ticks. All I know about these tiny arachnids is that they carry dangerous diseases, such as Lyme.<\/p>\n

Ben Tonelli \u201918, a double major in biology and religious studies, is also a cross country runner. But his honors-thesis research in biology means he can look at ticks from a scientific perspective.<\/p>\n

Last year, Tonelli took biology professor Donald Dearborn\u2019s Short Term course in avian biology. He learned that migrating songbirds can transport ticks southward as they leave Canada and the northern U.S. during the fall.<\/p>\n

“Until Ben\u2019s model, we haven\u2019t had a sense of where the redistribution might occur.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Intrigued, he planned do his thesis research in the field, looking at songbirds and the ticks they carry \u2014 that is, until last summer\u2019s biomedical engineering internship pointed him a different, more computational direction.<\/p>\n

The result is unique: Tonelli has created the first mathematical model to visually illustrate the movement of ticks as they hitch rides with songbirds migrating south.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve known for a long time that some southbound songbirds carry ticks, but until Ben\u2019s model, we haven\u2019t had a sense of where the redistribution might occur and the possible scale of that effect,\u201d Dearborn says. \u201cBen has connected the dots of existing research.\u201d<\/p>\n

As tick-borne illnesses continue to spread both northward and southward over the eastern U.S.<\/a>, Tonelli hopes his research will help scientists identify emerging public-health risks. \u201cThis is a topic people deal with in their daily life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

What inspired your thesis?<\/b><\/h5>\n

After I took Don\u2019s Short Term, we talked about doing something field-based for my thesis. Then, last summer I worked at the University of Vermont and studied under Joshua Pothen<\/a> and other researchers involved in biomedical engineering.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tonelli’s experience in an avian biology Short Term course taught by Don Dearborn in 2017 got him started on his honors thesis project. Here, Dearborn’s students head out to do fieldwork on Kent Island last May. (Don Dearborn)<\/p><\/div>\n

Dr. Prothen has created what\u2019s known as an individual-based model, also called an agent-based model, that seeks to predict the behavior of stem cells involved<\/a> in lung tissue regeneration. I thought about Don\u2019s central question, how songbirds transport ticks, and how it might be more fruitful to look at the literature and then create a model of how those pieces play into the phenomenon as a whole, as opposed to a specific study of a specific bird species.<\/p>\n

So I got the methodology from UVM and got the idea from Don and then combined those.<\/p>\n

Tell us more about your individual-based model.<\/h5>\n

An individual-based model is an interesting way to answer questions about the natural world. It is based on the idea that behavioral patterns of an individual, or agent, can explain a wide, system-level dynamic.<\/p>\n

My model depicts each bird as an individual. That meant I had to learn their behavior, so I went into the existing literature to find information; from that, I created the parameters for the model.<\/p>\n

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This animation of Ben Tonelli\u2019s individual-based model shows how songbirds transport ticks southward during fall migration. The animation starts with 800 black dots, simulating the ovenbird species, in their northern breeding grounds. Their departure southward turns the black dots to blue. Certain dots pick up ticks and turn green. The attachment site of each tick is an orange dot, and the dropoff site, farther south, is red.<\/em><\/p>\n