Thermal biology of mosquito-borne disease

Abstract

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 synthesise 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 – synthesised from previously published studies. Transmission varied strongly and unimodally with temperature, peaking at 23–29ºC and declining to zero below 9–23ºC and above 32–38ºC. 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 (25–26ºC) while dengue and Zika viruses had the highest (29ºC) thermal optima. 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.

Description

Keywords

Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Ecology, Environmental Sciences & Ecology, Arbovirus, climate change, dengue virus, malaria, mosquito, Ross River virus, Temperature, thermal performance curve, West Nile virus, Zika virus, Temperature-Dependence, Malaria Transmission, Plasmodium-Falciparum, Warmer Temperatures, Dengue Epidemics, Metabolic Theory, Host, Arbovirus, |0501 Ecological Applications, 0602 Ecology, 0603 Evolutionary Biology

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