Study identifies ticks that are most dangerous to humans

What makes a tick more likely to transmit an infection from animals to humans? In the journal BMC Ecology, researchers answer that question using a machine learning method known as generalized boosted regression. [1] This type of algorithm helps identify features that are most important in predicting “a response variable (here, a binary variable designating whether the Ixodes tick species is a zoonotic vector) by building thousands of linked classification trees that successively improve upon the predictions of the previous tree,” the authors explain.