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Anthropogenic landscape decreases mosquito biodiversity and drives malaria vector proliferation in the Amazon rainforest.

ABSTRACT: Inter-relationships among mosquito vectors, Plasmodium parasites, human ecology, and biotic and abiotic factors, drive malaria risk. Specifically, rural landscapes shaped by human activities have a great potential to increase the abundance of malaria vectors, putting many vulnerable people at risk. Understanding at which point the abundance of vectors increases in the landscape can help to design policies and interventions for effective and sustainable control. Using a dataset of adult female mosquitoes collected at 79 sites in malaria endemic areas in the Brazilian Amazon, this study aimed to (1) verify the association among forest cover percentage (PLAND), forest edge density (ED), and variation in mosquito diversity; and to (2) test the hypothesis of an association between landscape structure (i.e., PLAND and ED) and Nyssorhynchus darlingi (Root) dominance. Mosquito collections were performed employing human landing catch (HLC) (peridomestic habitat) and Shannon trap combined with HLC (forest fringe habitat). Nyssorhynchus darlingi abundance was used as the response variable in a generalized linear mixed model, and the Shannon diversity index (H') of the Culicidae community, PLAND, and the distance house-water drainage were used as predictors. Three ED categories were also used as random effects. A path analysis was used to understand comparative strengths of direct and indirect relationships among Amazon vegetation classes, Culicidae community, and Ny. darlingi abundance. Our results demonstrate that Ny. darlingi is negatively affected by H´ and PLAND of peridomestic habitat, and that increasing these variables (one-unit value at ?0 = 768) leads to a decrease of 226 (P < 0.001) and 533 (P = 0.003) individuals, respectively. At the forest fringe, a similar result was found for H' (?1 = -218; P < 0.001) and PLAND (?1 = -337; P = 0.04). Anthropogenic changes in the Amazon vegetation classes decreased mosquito biodiversity, leading to increased Ny. darlingi abundance. Changes in landscape structure, specifically decreases in PLAND and increases in ED, led to Ny. darlingi becoming the dominant species, increasing malaria risk. Ecological mechanisms involving changes in landscape and mosquito species composition can help to understand changes in the epidemiology of malaria.

SUBMITTER: Chaves LSM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7808592 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Anthropogenic landscape decreases mosquito biodiversity and drives malaria vector proliferation in the Amazon rainforest.

Chaves Leonardo Suveges Moreira LSM Bergo Eduardo Sterlino ES Conn Jan E JE Laporta Gabriel Zorello GZ Prist Paula Ribeiro PR Sallum Maria Anice Mureb MAM

PloS one 20210114 1

Inter-relationships among mosquito vectors, Plasmodium parasites, human ecology, and biotic and abiotic factors, drive malaria risk. Specifically, rural landscapes shaped by human activities have a great potential to increase the abundance of malaria vectors, putting many vulnerable people at risk. Understanding at which point the abundance of vectors increases in the landscape can help to design policies and interventions for effective and sustainable control. Using a dataset of adult female mo ...[more]

PMID: 33444320

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Project description:BackgroundStudies on vector behaviour should be conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of vector control measures on malaria protection in endemic areas of Latin America, where P. vivax predominates. This work aims to investigate the fauna of anopheline mosquitoes and verify the impact of integrated vector management in two colonization projects in the Careiro Municipality, Western Brazilian Amazon.MethodsFour mosquitoes' captures were carried out from August 2008 to March 2010, with an interval of six months between each collection. Since September 2009 a large programme to reduce the burden of malaria has started in the two communities by distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITN) and intensification of indoor residual spraying (IRS). Human biting rates (HBRs), entomological inoculation rates (EIRs), malaria incidence rate (MIR) and Plasmodium carrier's prevalence were used as outcomes to estimate the impact of the control measures.ResultsA total of 3,189 anophelines were collected, belonging to 13 species. Anopheles darlingi was the predominant species in the period (42.6%), followed by Anopheles albitarsis (38.4%). An. darlingi HBRs showed a notable decreasing trend from the start to the end of the study. Conversely, An. albitarsis increased its contribution to overall HBRs throughout the study. For An. darlingi there was a significant positive correlation between HBRs and MIR (p?=?0.002). Anopheles albitarsis HBRs showed a significant negative correlation with the corresponding MIR (p?=?0.045). EIR from total anophelines and from An. darlingi and An. albitarsis presented decreasing patterns in the successive collections. Four species of anophelines (An. darlingi, An. albitarsis, Anopheles braziliensis and Anopheles nuneztovari) were naturally infected with Plasmodium, albeit at very low infection rates. There were a decrease in the MIR for both vivax and falciparum malaria and in the prevalence of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum carriers during the period of study.ConclusionsThere is strong evidence of association between the density of An. darlingi and the incidence of malaria in the studies sites, further highlighting the importance of this vector in malaria transmission in this region. An. darlingi susceptibility to control using ITN and IRS is likely to be high in the rural settlements studied.

Project description:Human Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. Transmission is a complex phenomenon involving biological and environmental factors of humans, parasites and mosquitoes. Among more than 500 anopheline species, only a few species from different branches of the mosquito evolutionary tree transmit malaria, suggesting that their vectorial capacity has evolved independently. Anopheles albimanus (subgenus Nyssorhynchus) is an important malaria vector in the Americas. The divergence time between Anopheles gambiae, the main malaria vector in Africa, and the Neotropical vectors has been estimated to be 100 My. To better understand the biological basis of malaria transmission and to develop novel and effective means of vector control, there is a need to explore the mosquito biology beyond the An. gambiae complex.We sequenced the transcriptome of the An. albimanus adult female. By combining Sanger, 454 and Illumina sequences from cDNA libraries derived from the midgut, cuticular fat body, dorsal vessel, salivary gland and whole body, we generated a single, high-quality assembly containing 16,669 transcripts, 92% of which mapped to the An. darlingi genome and covered 90% of the core eukaryotic genome. Bidirectional comparisons between the An. gambiae, An. darlingi and An. albimanus predicted proteomes allowed the identification of 3,772 putative orthologs. More than half of the transcripts had a match to proteins in other insect vectors and had an InterPro annotation. We identified several protein families that may be relevant to the study of Plasmodium-mosquito interaction. An open source transcript annotation browser called GDAV (Genome-Delinked Annotation Viewer) was developed to facilitate public access to the data generated by this and future transcriptome projects.We have explored the adult female transcriptome of one important New World malaria vector, An. albimanus. We identified protein-coding transcripts involved in biological processes that may be relevant to the Plasmodium lifecycle and can serve as the starting point for searching targets for novel control strategies. Our data increase the available genomic information regarding An. albimanus several hundred-fold, and will facilitate molecular research in medical entomology, evolutionary biology, genomics and proteomics of anopheline mosquito vectors. The data reported in this manuscript is accessible to the community via the VectorBase website (http://www.vectorbase.org/Other/AdditionalOrganisms/).

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Anthropogenic landscape decreases mosquito biodiversity and drives malaria vector proliferation in the Amazon rainforest.

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Anthropogenic landscape decreases mosquito biodiversity and drives malaria vector proliferation in the Amazon rainforest.

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