Abstract
Chagas disease is one of the most important yet neglected parasitic diseases in Mexico and is transmitted by Triatominae. Nineteen of the 31 Mexican triatomine species have been consistently found to invade human houses and all have been found to be naturally infected with Trypanosoma cruzi. The present paper aims to produce a state-of-knowledge atlas of Mexican triatomines and analyse their geographic associations with T. cruzi, human demographics and landscape modification. Ecological niche models (ENMs) were constructed for the 19 species with more than 10 records in North America, as well as for T. cruzi. The 2010 Mexican national census and the 2007 National Forestry Inventory were used to analyse overlap patterns with ENMs. Niche breadth was greatest in species from the semiarid Nearctic Region, whereas species richness was associated with topographic heterogeneity in the Neotropical Region, particularly along the Pacific Coast. Three species, Triatoma longipennis, Triatoma mexicana and Triatoma barberi, overlapped with the greatest numbers of human communities, but these communities had the lowest rural/urban population ratios. Triatomine vectors have urbanised in most regions, demonstrating a high tolerance to human-modified habitats and broadened historical ranges, exposing more than 88% of the Mexican population and leaving few areas in Mexico without the potential for T. cruzi transmission.
Highlights
Vector-borne transmission of Chagas disease is widespread across the Americas, from Argentina and Chile north to Mexico and the southern United States of America (USA) (Coura & Dias 2009)
The species with the broadest geographic distributions in Mexico were those from the Nearctic Region (Nearctic 2) (Fig. 4), with T. protracta’s distribution being the largest (55.1% of the country) and T. peninsularis’s (Nearctic 1) (Fig. 5) being the smallest (1.2%) (Table III)
All Triatoma complexes had similar ranges: the protracta complex species covered between 1.2-55.1% of the country, the phyllosoma complex species covered between 1.7-43.8% and the dimidiata complex species covered between 3.2-20.1% of the country
Summary
Vector-borne transmission of Chagas disease is widespread across the Americas, from Argentina and Chile north to Mexico and the southern United States of America (USA) (Coura & Dias 2009). 31 autochthonous species of Triatominae are found in Mexico (Triatoma protracta includes four subspecies and Triatoma rubida includes five subspecies) and all have been found to be naturally infected with T. cruzi, except for the four rarest species: Belminus costaricensis, Triatoma bassolsae, Triatoma bolivari and Triatoma gomeznunezi (Ryckman 1962, Zárate & Zárate 1985, Tay et al 1992, Vidal et al 2000, Magallón et al 2001, Ibarra-Cerdeña et al 2009). The rubrofasciata subgroup includes the rubida complex (5 subspecies of T. rubida) of northern Mexico and the southern USA (Pfeiller et al 2006), the phyllosoma complex, which is found only in Mexico (11 species including Triatoma recurva) and the dimidiata complex [3 haplogroups (hg) of Triatoma dimidiata and Triatoma hegneri] (Ibarra-Cerdeña et al 2009). Recent studies have highlighted the need for a revision of triatomine systematics because phylogenetic results conflict with the current taxonomy (Ibarra-Cerdeña et al 2014, Justi et al 2014)
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