Abstract
BackgroundLand-use change has led to a dramatic decrease in total forest cover, contributing to biodiversity loss and changes of ecosystems’ functions. Insect communities of medical importance can be favored by anthropogenic alterations, increasing the risk of novel zoonotic diseases. The response of mosquito (Diptera: Culicidae) abundance and richness to five land-use types (shade coffee plantation, cattle field, urban forest, peri-urban forest, well-preserved montane cloud forest) and three seasons (“dry”, “rainy” and “cold”) embedded in a neotropical montane cloud forest landscape was evaluated.MethodsStandardized collections were performed using 8 CDC miniature black-light traps, baited with CO2 throughout the year. Generalized additive mixed models were used to describe the seasonal and spatial trends of both species richness and abundance. Rank abundance curves and ANCOVAs were used to detect changes in the spatial and temporal structure of the mosquito assemblage. Two cluster analyses were conducted, using 1-βsim and the Morisita-Horn index to evaluate species composition shifts based on incidences and abundances.ResultsA total of 2536 adult mosquitoes were collected, belonging to 9 genera and 10 species; the dominant species in the study were: Aedes quadrivittatus, Wyeomyia adelpha, Wy. arthrostigma, and Culex restuans. Highest richness was recorded in the dry season, whereas higher abundance was detected during the rainy season. The urban forest had the highest species richness (n = 7) when compared to all other sites. Species composition cluster analyses show that there is a high degree of similarity in species numbers across sites and seasons throughout the year. However, when considering the abundance of such species, the well-preserved montane cloud forest showed significantly higher abundance. Moreover, the urban forest is only 30 % similar to other sites in terms of species abundances, indicating a possible isolating role of the urban environment.ConclusionMosquito assemblage was differentially influenced by land-use change and seasonality, but at the same time the assemblage is rather homogeneous across the studied landscape, suggesting a high degree of spatial connectivity. Information generated in this study is potentially useful in the development of urban planning and surveillance programs focused mainly on mosquito species of medical and veterinary importance.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13071-015-1086-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Land-use change has led to a dramatic decrease in total forest cover, contributing to biodiversity loss and changes of ecosystems’ functions
Among the rare species we found Coquillettidia perturbans, Anopheles eiseni, Uranotaenia geometrica, Mansonia titillans and Sabethes gymnothorax, which together represent 1.46 % of the sample (Table 1)
Specimens of Aedes (Ochlerotatus) genus were not determined to the species level because only females were captured and male genitalia are required for species determination, but they were included in the study
Summary
Land-use change has led to a dramatic decrease in total forest cover, contributing to biodiversity loss and changes of ecosystems’ functions. Insect communities of medical importance can be favored by anthropogenic alterations, increasing the risk of novel zoonotic diseases. Land-use change has led to a dramatic decrease of total forest cover and an increasing isolation among forest remnants, contributing to the current biodiversity loss, rising species extinction rates, and alterations of key functional properties of ecosystems [1,2,3]. Studies on the effect of land-use changes on insect communities of medical importance (e.g., mosquitoes) are scarce, but in general show that anthropogenic alterations positively affect insect vector populations by creating favorable breeding conditions [9,10,11]. How insect vector communities respond to alterations of the landscape is relevant to understanding the emergence of zoonotic pathogens [15, 16]
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