Dengue Fever Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Dengue Fever, including details on symptoms, risk factors, diagnosis, treatment, prevention.

Time-specific ecological niche modeling predicts spatial dynamics of vector insects and human dengue cases.

Peterson AT, Martínez-Campos C, Nakazawa Y, Martínez-Meyer E

Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. town@ku.edu

Numerous human diseases-malaria, dengue, yellow fever and leishmaniasis, to name a few-are transmitted by insect vectors with brief life cycles and biting activity that varies in both space and time. Although the general geographic distributions of these epidemiologically important species are known, the spatiotemporal variation in their emergence and activity remains poorly understood. We used ecological niche modeling via a genetic algorithm to produce time-specific predictive models of monthly distributions of Aedes aegypti in Mexico in 1995. Significant predictions of monthly mosquito activity and distributions indicate that predicting spatiotemporal dynamics of disease vector species is feasible; significant coincidence with human cases of dengue indicate that these dynamics probably translate directly into transmission of dengue virus to humans. This approach provides new potential for optimizing use of resources for disease prevention and remediation via automated forecasting of disease transmission risk.

Published 11 July 2005 in Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg, 99(9): 647-55.
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