Abstract
Aim:The objective of this study was to establish environmental factors related to scorpion species occurrence and their current potential geographic distributions in Morocco, to produce a current envenomation risk map and also to assess the human population at risk of envenomation.Materials and Methods:In this study, 71 georeferenced points for all scorpion species and nine environmental indicators were used to generate species distribution models in Maxent (maximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions) version 3.3.3k. The models were evaluated by the area under the curve (AUC), using the omission error and the binomial probability. With the data generated by Maxent, distribution and envenomation risk maps were produced using the “ESRI® ArcGIS 10.2.2 for Desktop” software.Results:The models had high predictive success (AUC >0.95±0.025). Altitude, slope and five bioclimatic attributes were found to play a significant role in determining Androctonus scorpion species distribution. Ecological niche models (ENMs) showed high concordance with the known distribution of the species. Produced risk map identified broad risk areas for Androctonus scorpion envenomation, extending along Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, Souss-Massa-Draa, and some areas of Doukkala-Abda and Oriental regions.Conclusion:Considering these findings ENMs could be useful to afford important information on distributions of medically important scorpion species as well as producing scorpion envenomation risk maps.
Highlights
Scorpion envenomation is an important public health problem in many parts of the world; Central and South America, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia
From the results of ecological models, we could distinguish ecological variables related to the distribution of each scorpion species
The response of the three scorpion species toward each ecological factor is appraised based on response curves (Figure-1)
Summary
Scorpion envenomation is an important public health problem in many parts of the world; Central and South America, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Most venomous scorpions belong to the Buthidae family, which comprises species from the genera Androctonus and Buthus in North Africa, Tityus in South America, Centruroides in North and Central America, and Mesobuthus in Asia. The genus Androctonus is one of the largest and most widely distributed genera of the family Buthidae in North Africa. Species belonging to this genus are most frequently incriminated in severe scorpion stings. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated
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