Fig. 4

Effect of the reverse line blot (RLB) time lag on the NIP. The RLB time lag is the time interval between the date of collecting the ticks in the field and the date of testing the tick infection status using the RLB. The parameter estimates used to calculate the effect sizes were taken from the model-averaged parameter estimates in Additional file 1: Section 5. Increasing the RLB time lag by one standard deviation (e.g., 881 days) decreased the NIP by an average of 13.1% at each of the four elevation sites