Water associated with residential areas and tourist resorts is the key predictor of Asian tiger mosquito presence on a Mediterranean island

Abstract

The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae), is a highly invasive species and a vector of several viruses of serious concern to public health. Investigating the habitat selection of this species at small to medium scales is essential to the planning of effective prevention and control campaigns. The present group considered detailed data for this species' presence/absence collected at 228 sites on Mallorca Island (Spain) in autumn 2015, 3 years after the first detection of the species on the island. Site occupancy models accounting for false negative detections and imperfect monitoring were used to evaluate the relationships between mosquito presence and habitat variables. In the study area, mosquito presence was negatively associated with altitude, probably as a result of greater human presence at low altitudes near the coast. Moreover, the presence of Ae. albopictus was positively associated with swimming pools as a result of associated gardens, plants and sources of fresh water. These two variables were combined to predict the presence of the species across the entire island.

Expected Changes of Montenegrin Climate, Impact on the Establishment and Spread of the Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus), and Validation of the Model and Model-Based Field Sampling

“…albopictus, are much less dependent on total annual precipitation levels than breeding sites supporting the development of other mosquito species [67,68]. In Spain, the species has already been observed in dry areas (200 mm) which do not meet the conservative threshold for annual precipitation (≥500 mm/year) and should not support establishment [30,69]. In our model, the expected drop in annual precipitation (particularly from April to September) expected for the Montenegrin climate at the end of the century did not influence the spatial distribution of Ae.…”

“…The same could be applied in downscaling the vector model, taking into consideration the local particularity of the biotic, abiotic, and the socio-economic factors, e.g., using models which capture the regional heterogeneity and provide fine resolution maps for model-based monitoring/surveillance. New studies identify the human presence (host and container availability) as the most important factor [29,30].…”

“…The establishment of Aedes albopictus is influenced by a wide array of abiotic factors such as mean annual temperature [9,22], total annual precipitation [23], mean January temperature [9,24,25], mean summer temperature (June-July-August), frequency of precipitation [3,26,27], relative humidity [27] and land use [28][29][30]; biotic factors like NDVI [28,30]; and various socio-economic factors such as human population density [6,29,30], night-time light [6,29], water-keeping habits, rate of urbanization, housing quality, etc. [31,32].…”

“…Temperature and precipitation have been identified as the climatic elements that have the most significant effect on the suitability for the establishment and inter-annual activity of the vector. On the other hand, the mosquito is known to survive in arid conditions (total annual precipitation~200 mm) [30] if there is a sufficient density of artificial containers which can provide a suitable breeding site. For this reason, as well as host-availability, human population density is a crucial variable in the establishment of Ae.…”

Development and calibration of a model for the potential establishment and impact of Aedes albopictus in Europe

“…Correlative models are based on investigating the correlation existing between one or more variables and the current occurrence of the species. The main outputs of these models refers to species habitat suitability or potential spatial distribution (Benedict et al, 2007;Ding et al, 2018;Kraemer et al, 2019;Proestos et al, 2015;Santos and Mesenes, 2017;Sanz-Aguilar et al, 2018;Trájer et al, 2014). Despite their wide use, correlative approaches might have some limitations in predicting the potential distribution of the investigated species.…”