Tick mean abundance was significantly different among habitats, the effect of the transect as a random factor being highly significant ( p < 0.001) in all three models (i.e., for the two dominant species and the host community).
All four parasite taxa showed a decreasing trend along the increasing intensity of land use gradient ( Table A2 ), but the association was significant only for ticks ( Table A3 ), whose prevalence decreased from 0.328 in habitats with low-intensity land use to 0.135 in high-intensity land use habitats, and mites, decreasing from 0.609 to 0.327.
The prevalence of ticks had a linear decreasing trend from June to September, while a positive trend was recorded for mites and fleas, but prevalence did not differ significantly between the two years of the survey ( Table 1 ).