Abstract
Blackflies are important macroinvertebrate groups from a public health as well as ecological point of view. Determining the biological and environmental factors favouring or inhibiting the existence of blackflies could facilitate biomonitoring of rivers as well as control of disease vectors. The combined use of different predictive modelling techniques is known to improve identification of presence/absence and abundance of taxa in a given habitat. This approach enables better identification of the suitable habitat conditions or environmental constraints of a given taxon. Simuliidae larvae are important biological indicators as they are abundant in tropical aquatic ecosystems. Some of the blackfly groups are also important disease vectors in poor tropical countries. Our investigations aim to establish a combination of models able to identify the environmental factors and macroinvertebrate organisms that are favourable or inhibiting blackfly larvae existence in aquatic ecosystems. The models developed using macroinvertebrate predictors showed better performance than those based on environmental predictors. The identified environmental and macroinvertebrate parameters can be used to determine the distribution of blackflies, which in turn can help control river blindness in endemic tropical places. Through a combination of modelling techniques, a reliable method has been developed that explains environmental and biological relationships with the target organism, and, thus, can serve as a decision support tool for ecological management strategies.
Highlights
Our investigations aim to establish a combination of models able to identify the environmental factors and macroinvertebrate organisms that are favourable or inhibiting blackfly larvae existence in aquatic ecosystems
It is important to investigate the ecological factors affecting the distribution of blackflies in order to understand blackfly ecology and their environmental dynamcis [1,2]
Genetic algorithms (GA) are one of known techniques to boost model performance and improve the accuracy and predictive power by minimizing number of irrelevant attributes [10,26]
Summary
It is important to investigate the ecological factors affecting the distribution of blackflies in order to understand blackfly ecology and their environmental dynamcis [1,2]. Blackflies are one of the most frequently occurring aquatic taxa in tropical countries such as Ethiopia [3,4]. These organisms are important pollution indicators of running water habitats [5,6]. Because of their sensitivity to different environmental changes, they have been used to assess the impact of climate change and other anthropogenic activities [7]. Predictive models are often applied to assess, monitor and control environmental factors of a given taxon [9,10]. The goal of applying different predictive models is to simplify complex systems and to enable reliable predictions [15]
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