“…The application of BED for vector surveillance used in this work focused on establishing tick presence in public natural areas, although we note that the framework used here can be applied to other metrics such as abundance with minimal changes. While measuring tick presence or abundance in outdoor recreational areas such as state parks is a widely used method for establishing human exposure risk ( Falco and Fish, 1989 ; Hassett et al, 2022 ), and for detecting expanding ranges of ticks and tick-borne pathogens ( Johnson et al, 2017 ), the reliability of such data for predicting individualized risk of infection is unclear. For Lyme disease, it has been suggested that private property is the main source of exposure to host-seeking nymphs ( Eisen and Eisen, 2016 ; Mead et al, 2018 ).…”