For the people by the people: citizen science web interface for real-time monitoring of tick risk areas in Finland

Ticks and tick-borne diseases (TBDs) form a significant and growing threat to human health and well-being in Europe, with increasing numbers of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) and Lyme borreliosis cases being reported during the past few decades. Increasing knowledge of tick risk areas and seasonal activity remains the primary method for preventing TBDs. Crowdsourcing provides the best alternative for rapidly obtaining data on tick occurrence on a national level.
In order to produce and share up-to-date data about tick risk areas in Finland, an online platform, Punkkilive (www.punkkilive.fi/en), was launched in April 2021. On the website, users can submit and browse tick observations, report tick numbers and hosts, and upload pictures of ticks.
Here, we looked at trends in the crowdsourced data from 2021, assessed the effect of local tick species on seasonality of observations, and examined sampling bias in the data.
The high number of tick observations (n=78 837) highlights that there wa...