Recent study published that utilized citizen science to help predict the distribution of black-legged ticks

Ticks and tick-borne diseases are expanding and its import to monitor their distributions. Surveillance is usually passive and relies on case reports. While case reports offer estimates of the number of tick-borne disease cases, they lack information about vector population or pathogen dynamics. Disease risk is most commonly determined through active surveillance i.e. collecting ticks. Active surveillance provides information about ticks and sylvatic pathogens; however, this method is resource-intensive and results in little data. This data gap doesn’t offer great opportunities to model or identify range changes. Citizen science can be used to gather more data across a larger area with little resources and creates diverse samples, providing effective tracking of changes in vectors and pathogens. Rapidly changing environments due to increased human population and climate change can benefit from such citizen science initiatives. Read the full study here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0244754