Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Apr 19:5:e15272.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.15272.

Mapping global environmental suitability for Zika virus

Jane P Messina  1 , Moritz Ug Kraemer  1 , Oliver J Brady  2 , David M Pigott  2   3 , Freya M Shearer  2 , Daniel J Weiss  1 , Nick Golding  4 , Corrine W Ruktanonchai  5 , Peter W Gething  1 , Emily Cohn  6 , John S Brownstein  6 , Kamran Khan  7   8 , Andrew J Tatem  5   9 , Thomas Jaenisch  10   11 , Christopher Jl Murray  3 , Fatima Marinho  12 , Thomas W Scott  13 , Simon I Hay  2   3
Affiliations

Mapping global environmental suitability for Zika virus

Jane P Messina et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Zika virus was discovered in Uganda in 1947 and is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, which also act as vectors for dengue and chikungunya viruses throughout much of the tropical world. In 2007, an outbreak in the Federated States of Micronesia sparked public health concern. In 2013, the virus began to spread across other parts of Oceania and in 2015, a large outbreak in Latin America began in Brazil. Possible associations with microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome observed in this outbreak have raised concerns about continued global spread of Zika virus, prompting its declaration as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization. We conducted species distribution modelling to map environmental suitability for Zika. We show a large portion of tropical and sub-tropical regions globally have suitable environmental conditions with over 2.17 billion people inhabiting these areas.

Keywords: Zika virus; disease mapping; epidemiology; global health; human; infectious disease; microbiology; vector-borne disease; virus.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

SIH: Reviewing editor, eLife.

The other authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. (A) Map showing the distribution of the final set of 323 ZIKV occurrence locations entered into the ensemble Boosted Regression Tree modelling procedure.
Locations are classified by year of occurrence to show those which took place (i) prior to the 2007 outbreak in Federated States of Micronesia; (ii) between 2007–2014; and (iii) during the 2015–2016 outbreak; (B) the total number of locations reporting symptomatic ZIKV occurrence in humans globally over time. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15272.003
Figure 1—figure supplement 1.
Figure 1—figure supplement 1.. Maps of all covariates entered into the 300 BRT models.
(A) probability of being urban, 2015; (B) enhanced vegetation index; (C) minimum relative humidity; (D) cumulative annual precipitation (mm); (E) temperature suitability for dengue via Ae. aegypti; (F) temperature suitability for dengue via Ae. albopictus DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15272.004
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. Maps of (A) global environmental suitability for ZIKV, ranging from 0 (grey) to 1 (red), showing greater detail for (B) the Americas, (C) Africa, and (D) Asia and Oceania.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15272.005
Figure 2—figure supplement 1.
Figure 2—figure supplement 1.. Uncertainty around Zika suitability predictions displayed in main manuscript – Figure 2, ranging from less than 0.01 (very little uncertainty) to 0.94 (greatest uncertainty).
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15272.006
Figure 2—figure supplement 2.
Figure 2—figure supplement 2.. Effect plots for each covariate entered into the ensemble of 300 BRT models.
(A) minimum relative humidity; (B) cumulative annual precipitation (mm); (C) enhanced vegetation index; (B) probability of being urban (%); (E) temperature suitability for dengue via Ae. aegypti; (F) temperature suitability for dengue via Ae. albopictus. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15272.007
Figure 2—figure supplement 3.
Figure 2—figure supplement 3.. Environmental suitability for Zika virus transmission to humans, not taking into account temperature suitability for dengue via Aedes albopictus.
Covariate effects are as follows: cumulative annual precipitation (67.4%); temperature suitability for dengue via Ae. aegypti (16.9%); probability of being urban, 2015 (8.2%); enhanced vegetation index (5.1%); minimum relative humidity (2.4%). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15272.008
Figure 2—figure supplement 4.
Figure 2—figure supplement 4.. Map showing areas predicted to have greater dengue suitability (from Bhatt et al., 2013, Nature) vs those which are predicted to have greater Zika suitability in the current study.
These values are restricted to areas where both diseases had non-zero predictions. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15272.009
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. Status of ZIKV reporting as of 2016 by country, showing countries that are highly environmentally suitable (having a suitable area of more than 10,000 square kilometres) but which have not yet reported symptomatic cases of ZIKV in humans. 'Currently reporting' countries are those having reported cases since 2015.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.15272.010
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Araújo MB, New M. Ensemble forecasting of species distributions. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 2007;22:42–47. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2006.09.010. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Arino O, Bicheron P, Achard F, Latham J, Witt R, Weber JL. GLOBCOVER the most detailed portrait of earth. ESA Bulletin. 2008:24–31.
    1. Barbet-Massin M, Jiguet F, Albert CH, Thuiller W. Selecting pseudo-absences for species distribution models: How, where and how many? Methods in Ecology and Evolution. 2012;3:327–338. doi: 10.1111/j.2041-210X.2011.00172.x. - DOI
    1. Barrera R, Amador M, Clark GG. Use of the pupal survey technique for measuring Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) productivity in Puerto Rico. The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 2006;74:290–302. - PubMed
    1. Becker JJ, Sandwell DT, Smith WHF, Braud J, Binder B, Depner J, Fabre D, Factor J, Ingalls S, Kim S-H, Ladner R, Marks K, Nelson S, Pharaoh A, Trimmer R, Von Rosenberg J, Wallace G, Weatherall P. Global bathymetry and elevation data at 30 arc seconds resolution: Srtm30_plus. Marine Geodesy. 2009;32:355–371. doi: 10.1080/01490410903297766. - DOI

Publication types