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Objective: to describe the geographical distribution of intermediate hosts of Schistosoma mansoni in five Brazilian states. Methods: this was a descriptive cross-sectional study; municipalities were selected in the states of Paraná (78), Minas Gerais (120), Bahia (82), Pernambuco (51) , and Rio Grande do Norte (98), for the period 2012 to 2014; these municipalities were chosen because they did not have current records of the presence of snails vectores de S. mansoni. The molluscs were captured and taxonomically identified and examined for S. mansoni cercariae. Results: the work was carried out in 427 municipalities (99.5% of the 429 selected); the presence of mollusks was registered in 300 (70.2%) municipalities; Biomphalaria glabrata were found in 62 (21%) municipalities, B. straminea in 181 (60%), B. tenagophila in three (1%); B. glabrata/B. straminea association was found in 53 municipalities (18%) and B. glabrata/B. tenagophila association in one (0.3%) municipality. Conclusion: B. glabrata, B. straminea and B. tenagophila distribution records obtained in this study are consistent with previously known distribution.

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Species distribution models (SDMs) are increasingly popular tools for profiling disease risk in ecology, particularly for infectious diseases of public health importance that include an obligate non-human host in their transmission cycle. SDMs can create high-resolution maps of host distribution across geographical scales, reflecting baseline risk of disease. However, as SDM computational methods have rapidly expanded, there are many outstanding methodological questions. Here we address key questions about SDM application, using schistosomiasis risk in Brazil as a case study. Schistosomiasis—a debilitating parasitic disease of poverty affecting over 200 million people across Africa, Asia, and South America—is transmitted to humans through contact with the free-living infectious stage ofSchistosomaspp. parasites released from freshwater snails, the parasite’s obligate intermediate hosts. In this study, we compared snail SDM performance across machine learning (ML) approaches (MaxEnt, Random Forest, and Boosted Regression Trees), geographic extents (national, regional, and state), types of presence data (expert-collected and publicly-available), and snail species (Biomphalaria glabrata,B. tenagophilaandB. straminea). We used high-resolution (1km) climate, hydrology, land-use/land-cover (LULC), and soil property data to describe the snails’ ecological niche and evaluated models on multiple criteria. Although all ML approaches produced comparable spatially cross-validated performance metrics, their suitability maps showed major qualitative differences that required validation based on local expert knowledge. Additionally, our findings revealed varying importance of LULC and bioclimatic variables for different snail species at different spatial scales. Finally, we found that models using publicly-available data predicted snail distribution with comparable AUC values to models using expert-collected data. This work serves as an instructional guide to SDM methods that can be applied to a range of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. In addition, it advances our understanding of the relevant environment and bioclimatic determinants of schistosomiasis risk in Brazil.