Ecological Requirements for Abundance and Dispersion of Brazilian Yellow Fever Vectors in Tropical Areas

• Published in: International journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 21; no. 5; p. 609
• Main Authors: Prado, Amanda Francisco, Prist, Paula Ribeiro, Mucci, Luis Filipe, de Freitas, Patrícia Domingues
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 10.05.2024
• Subjects: Animals; Brazil; Culicidae - physiology; Culicidae - virology; Data collection; Ecosystem; Epidemics; Forests; Generalized linear models; Habitats; Mosquito Vectors - virology; Mosquitoes; Population Density; Software; Tropical Climate; Variables; Vegetation; Yellow Fever - transmission; Yellow fever virus; Brazil; Atlantic Forest; abundance modeling; connectivity; risk area; land-use change; landscape ecology; Atlantic Forest; disease ecology; virus; human health
• ISSN: 1660-4601; 1661-7827; 1660-4601
• DOI: 10.3390/ijerph21050609

In the Americas, wild yellow fever (WYF) is an infectious disease that is highly lethal for some non-human primate species and non-vaccinated people. Specifically, in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, and mosquitoes act as the major vectors. Despite transmission risk being related to vector densities, little is known about how landscape structure affects vector abundance and movement. To fill these gaps, we used vector abundance data and a model-selection approach to assess how landscape structure affects vector abundance, aiming to identify connecting elements for virus dispersion in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Our findings show that and abundances, in highly degraded and fragmented landscapes, are mainly affected by increases in forest cover at scales of 2.0 and 2.5 km, respectively. Fragmented landscapes provide ecological corridors for vector dispersion, which, along with high vector abundance, promotes the creation of risk areas for WYF virus spread, especially along the border with Minas Gerais state, the upper edges of the Serra do Mar, in the Serra da Cantareira, and in areas of the metropolitan regions of São Paulo and Campinas.