Aedes albopictus and Its Environmental Limits in Europe

Abstract

The Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus, native to South East Asia, is listed as one of the worst invasive vector species worldwide. In Europe the species is currently restricted to Southern Europe, but due to the ongoing climate change, Ae. albopictus is expected to expand its potential range further northwards. In addition to modelling the habitat suitability for Ae. albopictus under current and future climatic conditions in Europe by means of the maximum entropy approach, we here focused on the drivers of the habitat suitability prediction. We explored the most limiting factors for Aedes albopictus in Europe under current and future climatic conditions, a method which has been neglected in species distribution modelling so far. Ae. albopictus is one of the best-studied mosquito species, which allowed us to evaluate the applied Maxent approach for most limiting factor mapping. We identified three key limiting factors for Ae. albopictus in Europe under current climatic conditions: winter temperature in Eastern Europe, summer temperature in Southern Europe. Model findings were in good accordance with commonly known establishment thresholds in Europe based on climate chamber experiments and derived from the geographical distribution of the species. Under future climatic conditions low winter temperature were modelled to remain the most limiting factor in Eastern Europe, whereas in Central Europe annual mean temperature and summer temperatures were modelled to be replaced by summer precipitation, respectively, as most limiting factors. Changes in the climatic conditions in terms of the identified key limiting factors will be of great relevance regarding the invasive potential of the Ae. albopictus. Thus, our results may help to understand the key drivers of the suggested range expansion under climate change and may help to improve monitoring programmes. The applied approach of investigating limiting factors has proven to yield valuable results and may also provide valuable insights into the drivers of the prediction of current and future distribution of other species. This might be particularly interesting for other vector species that are of increasing public health concerns.

Mapping of Aedes albopictus Abundance at a Local Scale in Italy

“…albopictus abundance, in agreement with previous studies [15,50,55]. Temperatures strongly affect mosquito population growth, and thus the density of Ae.…”

“…albopictus distribution in the study area with respect to previous suitability maps of Ae. albopictus in Europe mainly based on climatic predictors only, especially temperatures [12,15,35,49,50] that did not allow the studies to differentiate artificial, agricultural, or forest areas for Ae. albopictus habitat suitability.…”

“…albopictus females, we selected several meteorological and LULC variables according to the literature [10,12,15].…”

“…According to the literature, an average winter temperature higher than 0 • C enables the overwintering of diapausing eggs of Ae. albopictus, and a mean summer temperature ranging from 25 to 30 • C is optimal for the establishment of its populations [15,37].…”

“…Previous suitability maps of Ae. albopictus have often been built based on SDMs including climate variables as predictors, mainly temperatures (e.g., the mean temperature of the coldest month, the mean temperature of the warmest quarter), but also precipitations (e.g., annual precipitation, precipitation in spring or summer) [12,15]. By contrast, LULC has been only marginally considered as a predictor of Ae.…”