Ecological Niche Modeling and Land Cover Risk Areas for Rift Valley Fever Vector, Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles in Jazan, Saudi Arabia

Mohamed F Sallam, Azzam M Al Ahmed, Mahmoud S Abdel-Dayem and Mohamed A R Abdullah

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 6, 1-13

Abstract: Background: The mosquito, Culex tritaeniorhynchus Giles is a prevalent and confirmed Rift Valley Fever virus (RVFV) vector. This vector, in association with Aedimorphus arabiensis (Patton), was responsible for causing the outbreak of 2000 in Jazan Province, Saudi Arabia. Methodology/Principal Findings: Larval occurrence records and a total of 19 bioclimatic and three topographic layers imported from Worldclim Database were used to predict the larval suitable breeding habitats for this vector in Jazan Province using ArcGIS ver.10 and MaxEnt modeling program. Also, a supervised land cover classification from SPOT5 imagery was developed to assess the land cover distribution within the suitable predicted habitats. Eleven bioclimatic and slope attributes were found to be the significant predictors for this larval suitable breeding habitat. Precipitation and temperature were strong predictors of mosquito distribution. Among six land cover classes, the linear regression model (LM) indicated wet muddy substrate is significantly associated with high-very high suitable predicted habitats (R2 = 73.7%, P

Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0065786

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0065786

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