FIGURE 1.

(a) Tick‐borne disease compartmental model and (b) tick life cycle. Boxes represent epidemiological compartments in which each population is subdivided: L, tick larval stage; S, susceptible; I, infectious; R, recovered. Subscripts are n, tick nymphal stage; a, tick adult stage; i, rodent species (host). Vectors can feed also on non‐host competitor species (shrew) and specialist predators. Arrows indicate the direction of movement of individuals between classes (solid line, vector; dash‐dotted line, host). Arrows pointing outside the boxes represent mortality (dashed lines, host mortality through predation; dotted lines, vector natural mortality). Thicker arrows represent transmission. Each of the five scenarios in Table 1 were based on this model, with non‐host competitor occurring in scenarios 3 to 5, generalist and specialist predation occurring only in scenarios 4 and 5