Data from: Functional vertebrate group diversity, tick-borne pathogen ecology and genetic diversity

Anthropogenic land use change has led to considerable biodiversity loss,
affecting ecosystem functions with unresolved consequences for zoonotic
disease transmission. Functional diversity is understudied but potentially
important for understanding the role of biodiversity because many zoonotic
disease systems are maintained by species with different roles in disease
transmission. Here, we explore how functional groups and pathogen genetic
diversity influence transmission and human disease risk within the Lyme
disease system. Our field and molecular ecology study examined ticks and
vertebrates across a fragmented landscape and evaluated several metrics of
disease risk. For predicting vector and infected vector density, rodent
host richness had a positive effect and was most important, but vector
infection prevalence was best predicted by rodent and predator richness
together, reflecting how indirect effects may alter tick-host interactions
and disease risk. These results indicate that examining species richness
generally may obscure important interactions driven by richness within
functional groups. Pathogen genotype richness was best predicted by
overall vertebrate richness, providing support for the multiple niche
polymorphism hypothesis. Our study offers an important perspective on the
relationship between biodiversity and disease risk, suggesting that
richness within functional groups may offer more nuanced insight into
pathogen transmission dynamics than overall biodiversity.