PS 44-184 - Contextualizing the Relationship Between Vector Mosquitoes and Climate Change from Long-term Ecological Data for the Continental United States

Abstract: Climate change is known to induce multiple environmental and socioeconomic issues worldwide. For instance, increased risk of transmission of vector-borne diseases is particularly known to be associated with warming atmospheric temperatures. Although the relationship between climate change and prevalence of disease vectors have been well studied in the tropical realm, similar studies have not been investigated in North America. Among numerous vectors that transmit diseases to humans, mosquitoes are particularly important as mosquitoes tend to expand their geographic ranges with warming climate. These range expansions are likely to introduce tropical diseases from Latin American regions to North America. Consequences of climate change such as increasing nighttime temperatures, shortened winter seasons, unusually warmer winters, and elevated summer temperatures can also contribute to reproductive success of mosquitoes and even increase their feeding rates. Therefore, the risk of mosquito-borne disease transmission in the North America is not trivial. The purpose of our study was to explore the relationship between mosquito abundance and species richness with climatic variables (i.e., temperature, precipitation, and humidity). We obtained both climate and mosquito data from the National Ecological Observatory Network for information from across the United States, based in 44 different terrestrial sites. We then used the open-source statistical software R and neonUtilities package to access data, removed any erroneous data points (e.g., broken traps or incomplete sampling) and standardized the data for model development. The modeling process is currently still in progress. We determined the species richness and abundance throughout the whole domain as well as individual trap bouts. The largest collection of a single species and gender was that of female Anopheles walker, of which 690 were collected on June 17^th, 2014 in Woodworth, North Dakota at Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge after 9 trap hours. We also found that numerous sites across the United States had only a single individual captured during a trap period, across multiple locations, dates, species, and genders. The highest domain species richness is in D03, which comprises Florida and Georgia, with 45 unique species. The least is D15, which is Utah, with only 11 species total. Domain 3 also had the largest abundance of mosquitoes caught, with 443,838 caught since 2014. The least is D16, which is Washington, with only 2,484 caught. In conclusion, this study suggests possible links between changes in climatic variables and the populations of mosquitoes which, by extension, links climatic variables to vector diseases.