Cities As Interfaces of Zoonotic Hazard Emergence: Development of the New York City Tick and Wildlife Urban Surveillance System

Tick-borne hazards in urban landscapes are increasing, yet critical gaps remain in understanding human tick-borne disease risk across urbanization gradients. With the loss of natural habitat globally, urban greenspaces can provide a critical habitat for wildlife with varying consequences for tick-borne disease emergence. The New York City metropolitan area has the highest human population density and geographic footprint of any city in the United States, while containing a vast network of greenspaces. These urban greenspaces vary in surrounding land cover and connectivity, providing important refugia and habitat for hundreds of urban wildlife species, which have been historically understudied. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there are no urban tick surveillance systems in place to monitor how ticks and their wildlife hosts respond to and emerge in urban environments. To address this gap, a long-term urban tick and wildlife surveillance system was developed across an urbanization gradient from New York City through Long Island, NY. Here, we describe the process of working with a diverse group of partners to design, implement, and maintain a paired wildlife camera trapping and tick surveillance system. The process began by the formation of an advisory committee of tick-borne disease experts and wildlife management partners who provided insights and feedback to collaboratively work through the following steps: 1) initial urbanization gradient visualization and delineation, 2) potential greenspace selection, 3) site permissions, 4) wildlife camera and tick collection site selection, 5) wildlife camera placement, 6) tick collections, 7) tick identification, 8) wildlife camera photo identification, and 9) transect maintenance and reporting outcomes. As New York City and other cities across the globe continue to grow, collaborative projects such as the Tick and Wildlife Urban Surveillance System can generate knowledge that will help people respond to emerging zoonotic hazards in urban environments.