CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

tThe aim of this work was to study the composition of the Culicidae community in three environmentswith different degrees of anthropic disturbance in the province of Chaco. The nonparametric richnessestimator ACE was calculated to measure the completeness of the sampling in each environment, andthe diversity of each environment (-diversity) were estimated. The composition, abundance and uni-formity of species from the different environments were compared by means of range-species curves.-diversity was measured as species complementarity, which allowed us to know the degree of dissim-ilarity among the environments. The synanthropic index was estimated, identifying urban environment(synanthropic) species, eusynanthropic species, and wild species. The influence of climatic factors (meantemperature, relative humidity and rainfall) on the monthly and annual variations of the identifiedmosquito species was analysed using multilevel Poisson models with over-dispersion. The wild environ-ment showed higher diversity and the semi-urban environment higher species richness. Despite havinglower S and abundance, the urban environment showed greater diversity than semi-urban environment,although it also showed lower completeness, which means S could increase. Anthropogenic disturbancecan lead to the elimination and/or modification or substitution of habitats, with the subsequent loss ofrichness in the more sensitive species of Culicidae fauna, although the conditions are also favourablefor the settling of opportunistic and exotic species well-adjusted to disturbed environments. Most of thespecies abundances were positively influenced by the analysed climatic variables. The study area showeda rich Culicidae fauna of public health significance, with a risk of pathogen transmission, suggesting theneed of further studies and the febrile and entomological surveillance.