Influence of climatic factors on Ixodes ricinus nymph abundance and phenology over a long-term monthly observation in Switzerland (2000–2014)

Table 2 Results of the six model selection procedures at different time scales

Climatic variable	Field measure	Daily mean (weather station)	5 day MA	10 day MA	17 day MA	30 day MA
Ns (date, df = 6)	×	×	×	×	×	×
T	×	×	×	×	×	×
T²	×	×	×	×	×	×
RH	×	×	×^*	×^*	×^*
RH²	×^*			×^*
PR	NT	NT
PR²	NT	NT
AIC	1047.5	1047.7	1049.2	1054.9	1060.9	1085.0
∆AIC	0	0.2	1.7	7.4	13.4	37.5

Notes: Each column (starting from column 2) represents a model in which nymph density (nb/100 m²) was the response variable (n = 173), and the explanatory variables used in the full model are listed in the first column, i.e. temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), and precipitations (PR), with their respective quadratic terms. Crossed = term included in the model after backward stepwise selection based on Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). AIC and ∆AIC (difference with the model with the lowest AIC). Terms included (×) were statistically significant in their respective model output. Terms noted with an asterisk (×^*) indicate a trend (P < 0.1) in the model output. Precipitations were not considered in the 2 first models (NT, not tested) due to biases induced by the arbitrary choice to sample nymph only during dry days. PR was not found to be significant in any of the tested models

ISSN: 1756-3305