ABSTRACT
Preventing diseases from becoming a problem where they are not is a common ground for disease ecology. The expectation for vector-borne diseases, especially those transmitted by mosquitos, is that warm and wet conditions favor vector traits increasing transmission potential. The advent of urbanization altering inner climate conditions hazards to increase mosquito’s transmission potential on “disease-free” cooler areas as a consequence of a warming urban heat island (UHI) effect.
We assessed the realism of the anticipated dengue transmission potential into the southern United States in a causal pathway with the ongoing UHI effect, vectors’ spatial distribution patterns, and exogenous environment; We also measured the climatic niche similarity between both dengue vectors species.
Our path model revealed that the UHI effect presents negative or no relation with dengue transmission potential. Instead, the surrounding non-urban temperature was rather suitable for the expected mosquitos’ transmission potential.
Both dengue vectors’ occurrence revealed to be more aggregated then expected by chance. These mosquitos’ density patterns were responsive to the warming effect of UHI-especially Aedes Aegypti-but not a reliable predictor for the anticipated dengue transmission potential pattern. The climatic niches of both vectors are not equivalent. Although currently highly overlapped, there is a wide space of their climatic niche still to be filled.
Policy implications. We highlight that the warming UHI effect on urban sites is not congruent with the expected suitability for dengue transmission. Instead, non-urban areas would be a better focus for dengue hazards into the southern United States. Our study also highlights the need for including low scale temperature on further mosquito-borne disease transmission models and track vectors niche filling under anthropogenic changes.
