VEGETATION COVER AND HUMIDITY INFLUENCE ON THE ABUNDANCE OF SANDFLIES IN COLONIA SANTA ROSA LOCALITY, NORTHWEST OF ARGENTINA

ARAMAYO, LV; COPA, GN; HOYOS, CL; NASSER, JR; GIL, JF

Mar del Plata

Encuentro; XXXI Annual Meeting of Sociedad Argentina de Protozoología (SAP); 2019

Sociedad Argentina de Protozoologia

Tegumentary Leishmaniasis (TL) is endemic in northern ofArgentina, with a zoonotic transmission pattern in northern of Salta and Orandepartment is the most affected. The vegetation cover and humidity caninfluence the presence and abundance of sandflies. The aim of this work was toanalyze the potential influence of the vegetation cover and the humidity on thesandflies species captured in Colonia Santa Rosa locality (CSR) from the Saltaprovince. To sandflies capture, CDC traps were placed in 14 sites during fournights in January 2016, between 18 pm and 7 am. The sampling sites weredistributed in downtown housing yards, periphery and edges of residual vegetation.The species were determined through identification of spermatheca, cibarios andgenitalia. The NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index; estimate thevegetation cover) and NDWI (normalized difference water index; estimate the humidity)for the study area were obtained from Google Engine. Then, using the QGIS 3.6software, circular buffers of 100 meters of radius were generated whosecentroids were the sampling sites. The average of the values of the NDVI andNDWI pixels extracted by means of the circular area were used to perform acorrelation analysis with the abundance of the different species of sandfliesusing the non-parametric Spearman method. A total of 435 sandflies werecaptured. The species found and their abundances expressed by capture effortwere: Nyssomyia neivai (133.33 %), Mygonemyia migonei (5.66%), CortelezziiComplex (4 %), Evandromyia sallesi (0.33 %) and sp (2 %). The values of NDVIand NDWI versus the total abundance of sandflies (r= 0.78; r= 0.70; p<0.05)and Nyssomyia neivai (r= 0.76; r= 0.68; p<0.05) showed statisticallysignificant correlations. The effect of vegetation cover and humidity on the abundanceof sandflies can be used potentially as a tool to generate interventions for 0controland prevention of LT in northern Salta.