Abstract
Urban habitat heterogeneity can modify interactions across species and lead to spatially fine grained differences in β-diversity patterns and their associated ecosystem services. Here, we study the impacts of landscape heterogeneity and climatic variability on: (1) the richness and diversity patterns of mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) and (2) the abundance and West Nile virus infection rate of the house mosquito, Culex pipiens, in Chicago, USA. We conducted a four year long study (2005–2008) in 8 sites that captured a gradient of urban heterogeneities. We found a total of 19 mosquito species, a representative sample of mosquito species richness in the area, according to both model estimation (Chao2 ± S.E. = 20.50 ± 2.29) and faunal records for Chicago. We found that heterogeneity in the landscape was the best predictor of both mosquito species richness and diversity, with the most heterogeneous landscapes harboring the largest number of species. In general there were no changes in species richness over the years that could be associated with weather patterns and climatic variability (WPCV). In contrast, changes in diversity were associated with WPCV. Our results also showed that WPCV had major impacts on house mosquito abundance and West Nile virus mosquito infection rate (MIR) patterns. Although MIR was independent of mosquito diversity, it was associated with overall mosquito abundance, which had a convex association with species richness (i.e., abundance increases to a point after which it decreases as function of species richness). Finally, our results highlight the importance of considering dominant vector species as part of a community of vectors, whose biodiversity patterns can directly or indirectly impact the risk of infectious disease transmission.
Highlights
Environmental change has led to species loss over ecological and evolutionary time scales (McKinney and Lockwood 1999, Gould 2002)
With the static approach we use tools from geographic information systems to ask: which landscape characteristics promote the diversity of mosquitoes in urban environments? We complement the insights of the static approach with a dynamic approach where we explore how mosquito diversity patterns are shaped by the different elements of climatic variability, i.e., the variability of meteorological forces at time scales shorter than those used to define climate but longer than those used in weather descriptions
Our results show that landscape heterogeneity, weather patterns and climatic variability are associated with the diversity patterns of mosquito communities, the abundance of Culex pipiens and its West Nile virus (WNv) mosquito infection rate
Summary
Environmental change has led to species loss over ecological and evolutionary time scales (McKinney and Lockwood 1999, Gould 2002). The impact of human activities on the environment is currently driving a loss of species that, over a range of spatial scales, can be compared with major shifts observed through the history of life on earth, where the number of species has been dramatically reduced over relatively short periods of time (Myers et al 2000, Gould 2002). This pattern of biodiversity loss is of special concern given the poor ecological knowledge about most species on earth. Cities are of special interest because of the potential for vast disease transmission and pathogen exposure (Bradley and Altizer 2007), including vector-borne diseases that affect humans in both developing and wealthy nations (Utzinger and Keiser 2006, Ruiz et al 2007)
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