The dominant Anopheles vectors of human malaria in Africa, Europe and the Middle East: occurrence data, distribution maps and bionomic précis

Marianne E Sinka,Will H Temperley,Thomas Van Boeckel,Sylvie Manguin,Michael J Bangs,Maureen Coetzee,Peter W Gething,Anand P Patil,Janet Hemingway,Charles M Mbogo,H Charles J Godfray,Robi M Okara,Caroline W Kabaria,Simon I Hay,Ralph E Harbach

doi:10.1186/1756-3305-3-117

Abstract

BackgroundThis is the second in a series of three articles documenting the geographical distribution of 41 dominant vector species (DVS) of human malaria. The first paper addressed the DVS of the Americas and the third will consider those of the Asian Pacific Region. Here, the DVS of Africa, Europe and the Middle East are discussed. The continent of Africa experiences the bulk of the global malaria burden due in part to the presence of the An. gambiae complex. Anopheles gambiae is one of four DVS within the An. gambiae complex, the others being An. arabiensis and the coastal An. merus and An. melas. There are a further three, highly anthropophilic DVS in Africa, An. funestus, An. moucheti and An. nili. Conversely, across Europe and the Middle East, malaria transmission is low and frequently absent, despite the presence of six DVS. To help control malaria in Africa and the Middle East, or to identify the risk of its re-emergence in Europe, the contemporary distribution and bionomics of the relevant DVS are needed.ResultsA contemporary database of occurrence data, compiled from the formal literature and other relevant resources, resulted in the collation of information for seven DVS from 44 countries in Africa containing 4234 geo-referenced, independent sites. In Europe and the Middle East, six DVS were identified from 2784 geo-referenced sites across 49 countries. These occurrence data were combined with expert opinion ranges and a suite of environmental and climatic variables of relevance to anopheline ecology to produce predictive distribution maps using the Boosted Regression Tree (BRT) method.ConclusionsThe predicted geographic extent for the following DVS (or species/suspected species complex*) is provided for Africa: Anopheles (Cellia) arabiensis, An. (Cel.) funestus*, An. (Cel.) gambiae, An. (Cel.) melas, An. (Cel.) merus, An. (Cel.) moucheti and An. (Cel.) nili*, and in the European and Middle Eastern Region: An. (Anopheles) atroparvus, An. (Ano.) labranchiae, An. (Ano.) messeae, An. (Ano.) sacharovi, An. (Cel.) sergentii and An. (Cel.) superpictus*. These maps are presented alongside a bionomics summary for each species relevant to its control.

Highlights

This is the second in a series of three articles documenting the geographical distribution of 41 dominant vector species (DVS) of human malaria
African DVS A total of 4581 independent sites, of which 4234 were successfully geo-referenced, reported the presence of one or more African DVS, relating to 9300 (8646 georeferenced) occurrences (Table 5)
The following results refer only to geo-referenced data, and of these 3951 sites were at a resolution suitable to be applied to the Boosted Regression Tree (BRT) model

Summary

Introduction

This is the second in a series of three articles documenting the geographical distribution of 41 dominant vector species (DVS) of human malaria. This paper is a second in a series of three contributions discussing the geographic distribution and bionomics of the dominant vector species (DVS) of human malaria [1,2]. It deals with the DVS of Africa, Europe and the Middle East. The anthropophilic habits of these DVS are a major contributing factor to their public health impact, An. funestus is considered to be one of the first species to have adapted to human hosts [19]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion