Thermal biology of mosquito-borne disease

By Erin A. Mordecai, J. Caldwell, Marissa K. Grossman, C. Lippi, Leah R. Johnson, Marco Neira, Jason Rohr, Sadie J. Ryan, Van M. Savage, Marta S. Shocket and 4 more. Ecology Letters, 2019

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Mosquito-borne diseases cause a major burden of disease worldwide. The vital rates of these ectothermic vectors and parasites respond strongly and nonlinearly to temperature and therefore to climate change. Here, we review how trait-based approaches can synthesize and mechanistically predict the temperature dependence of transmission across vectors, pathogens, and environments. We present 11 pathogens transmitted by 15 different mosquito species—including globally important diseases like malaria, dengue, and Zika—synthesized from previously published studies. Transmission varied strongly and unimodally with temperature, peaking at 23 – 29°C and declining to zero below 9 – 23°C and above 32 – 38°C. Different traits restricted transmission at low versus high temperatures, and temperature effects on transmission varied by both mosquito and parasite species. Temperate pathogens exhibit broader thermal ranges and cooler thermal minima and optima than tropical pathogens. Among tropical pathogens, malaria and Ross River virus had lower thermal optima (25 – 26°C) while dengue and Zika viruses had the highest (29°C). We expect warming to increase transmission below thermal optima but decrease transmission above optima. Key directions for future work include linking mechanistic models to field transmission, combining temperature effects with control measures, incorporating trait variation and temperature variation, and investigating climate adaptation and migration.

Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4bf31605861113afd6734030327fe6aba3bfd6ec