Past and future spread of the arbovirus vectors Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus

Moritz U G Kraemer (1, 2, 3) , Robert C. Reiner Jr (4) , Oliver J. Brady (5) , Jane Messina (1) , Marius Gilbert (6, 7) , David M Pigott (4) , Dingdong Yi (8) , Kimberly Johnson (4) , Lucas Earl (4) , Laurie Marczak (4) , Shreya Shirude (4) , Nicole Davis Weaver (4) , Donal Bisanzio (9) , T. Alex Perkins (10) , Shengjie Lai (11, 12, 13) , Xin Lu (14, 15, 16) , Peter Jones (17) , Giovanini Coelho (18) , Roberta G. Carvalho (19) , Wim van Bortel (20, 21) , Cedric Marsboom (22) , Guy Hendrickx (22) , Francis Schaffner (23) , Chester Moore (24) , Heinrich Nax (25) , Linus Bengtsson (13, 26) , Erik Wetter (27, 13) , Andrew J Tatem (12, 13) , John S Brownstein (2, 3) , David L. Smith (4) , Louis A Lambrechts (28) , Simon Cauchemez (29) , Catherine Linard (5, 30) , Nuno Faria (1) , Oliver G Pybus (1) , Thomas Scott (31) , Qiyong Liu (32, 33) , Hongjie Yu (8) , G R William Wint (1) , Simon Hay (4) , Nick Golding (34)

1 University of Oxford
2 Boston Children's Hospital
3 HMS - Harvard Medical School [Boston]
4 University of Washington [Seattle]
5 LSHTM - London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
6 ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
7 FNRS - Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique [Bruxelles]
8 Harvard University [Cambridge]
9 UON - University of Nottingham, UK
10 Eck Institute for Global Health
11 Fudan University [Shanghai]
12 University of Southampton
13 Flowminder Foundation
14 Central South University [Changsha]
15 National University of Defense Technology [China]
16 Southwestern University of Finance and Economics [Chengdu, China]
17 Waen Associates Ltd
18 PAHO - Pan American Health Organization [Washington]
19 Ministry of Health [Brasília, Brazil]
20 ECDC - European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control [Stockholm, Sweden]
21 ITM - Institute of Tropical Medicine [Antwerp]
22 Egis Avia (FRANCE)
23 Francis Schaffner Consultancy
24 CSU - Colorado State University [Fort Collins]
25 ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich]
26 Karolinska Institutet [Stockholm]
27 SSE - Stockholm School of Economics
28 IVI - Interactions Virus-Insectes - Insect-Virus Interactions
29 Modélisation mathématique des maladies infectieuses - Mathematical modelling of Infectious Diseases
30 UNamur - Université de Namur [Namur]
31 UC Davis - University of California [Davis]
32 Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
33 Shandong University
34 University of Melbourne

The global population at risk from mosquito-borne diseases-including dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika-is expanding in concert with changes in the distribution of two key vectors: Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. The distribution of these species is largely driven by both human movement and the presence of suitable climate. Using statistical mapping techniques, we show that human movement patterns explain the spread of both species in Europe and the United States following their introduction. We find that the spread of Ae. aegypti is characterized by long distance importations, while Ae. albopictus has expanded more along the fringes of its distribution. We describe these processes and predict the future distributions of both species in response to accelerating urbanization, connectivity and climate change. Global surveillance and control efforts that aim to mitigate the spread of chikungunya, dengue, yellow fever and Zika viruses must consider the so far unabated spread of these mosquitos. Our maps and predictions offer an opportunity to strategically target surveillance and control programmes and thereby augment efforts to reduce arbovirus burden in human populations globally.

Domains: Virology

Moritz U G Kraemer, Robert C. Reiner Jr, Oliver J. Brady, Jane Messina, Marius Gilbert, et al.. Past and future spread of the arbovirus vectors Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. Nature Microbiology, 2019, 13, ⟨10.1038/s41564-019-0376-y⟩. ⟨pasteur-02067318⟩