Trends in mosquito species distribution modeling: insights for vector surveillance and disease control

Abstract

Species distribution modeling (SDM) has become an increasingly common approach to explore questions about ecology, geography, outbreak risk, and global change as they relate to infectious disease vectors. Here, we conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature, screening 563 abstracts and identifying 204 studies that used SDMs to produce distribution estimates for mosquito species. While the number of studies employing SDM methods has increased markedly over the past decade, the overwhelming majority used a single method (maximum entropy modeling; MaxEnt) and focused on human infectious disease vectors or their close relatives. The majority of regional models were developed for areas in Africa and Asia, while more localized modeling efforts were most common for North America and Europe. Findings from this study highlight gaps in taxonomic, geographic, and methodological foci of current SDM literature for mosquitoes that can guide future efforts to study the geography of mosquito-borne disease risk.

Keywords: Aedes; Anopheles; Culex; MaxEnt; Maximum entropy modeling; Species distribution modeling.

Fig. 1

Flow diagram of the systematic review process, indicating combinations of search terms and number of studies screened

Fig. 2

Top 10 mosquito species, within each genus, that have been studied with species distribution models (SDMs). Most efforts focused on Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, followed by Culex pipiens, though collectively species in the genus Anopheles were also extensively modeled. Cs. Culiseta, Cq. Coquillettidia, Hg. Haemagogus, Ps. Psorophora, Sa. Sabethes, Ur. Uranotaenia

Fig. 3

Cumulative number of studies on mosquitoes that modeled a given mosquito genus (a), and the SDM methods used in studies over time (b). CTA Classification tree analysis, MaxEnt maximum entropy, GARP genetic algorithm for rule-set production

Fig. 4

Breakdowns of methods used, shown by taxonomic groups for Aedes (a), Anopheles (b), Culex (c), and studies that estimated distributions for multiple genera (d). For abbreviations, see Fig. 3

Fig. 5

Map representing the number of SDM studies conducted at the national or sub-national level (country, greyscale) and the mosquito genera modeled in the studies (pie chart, color breakdown)

Fig. 6

The proportion of spatial scales represented in the reviewed SDM studies, shown by genera for Aedes (a), Anopheles (b), Culex (c), and multiple genera (d)

Fig. 7

A conceptual workflow for dynamic mosquito species distribution modeling