Integrating demographic and meteorological data in urban ecology: a case study of container-breeding mosquitoes in temperate Argentina.

CARDO M.V.; VEZZANI D.; RUBIO A.; CARBAJO A.

Area

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Año: 2014 vol. 46 p. 18 - 26

1475-4762

Cities are unique ecosystems emerging and growing worldwide due toongoing urbanizing trends. The urban-rural gradient is an excellent settingto evaluate the effect of urbanization on the distribution of species, amatter of public health concern in the case of disease vectors. Despite this,such distributions are affected by other co-occurring variables, mainlymeteorological, that may be confounded by the urbanization gradient dueto the urban heat island effect and maritime climatological conditions in thecase of coastal cities. To aid in the design of ecological studies within theurban-rural transition zone, a mapping protocol was designed and appliedto Buenos Aires City and its surroundings. Based on road density anddistrict-level population counts, a detailed (1km2-pixel) urbanization mapwas obtained which, combined with a temperature map, rendered a finalurbanization x temperature product with six classes. The resulting zonationwas tested by modeling the distribution of the vector mosquitoes Aedesaegypti and Culex pipiens in artificial containers. The selected modelexplained the occurrence of mosquitoes 59% better than chance as afunction of the urbanization x temperature categories and the naturallighting condition of the container. This novel zonation approach allows forthe partitioning of the environmental heterogeneity prior to the selection ofstudy sites to avoid confounding gradients and presents multipleadvantages, such as making comparisons across cities easier, extrapolatingthe results of site-scale experiments and identifying priority areas forcontrol measures.