Global Distribution of Culicoides imicola, a Major Vector of Bluetongue, Schmallenberg and African Horse Sickness Viruses

Event Abstract Back to Event Global Distribution of Culicoides imicola, a Major Vector of Bluetongue, Schmallenberg and African Horse Sickness Viruses Samson Leta Regassa1*, Eyerusalem Fetene1, Tesfaye Mulatu2, Kebede Amenu1, Megersa Bedasa1, Tariku Jibat Beyene1, Haileleul Negussie1 and Crawford W. Revie3 1 Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia 2 National Animal Health Diagnostic and Investigation Centre (NAHDIC), Ethiopia 3 University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom Background: Culicoides imicola is a midge species transmitting the agents of a number of viral diseases of veterinary importance, including Bluetongue, Schmallenberg, and African Horse Sickness. Climatic, social and demographic factors may impose rapid changes on the global distribution of C. imicola and allow introduction into new area. Objectives: the aim of this study is to extract the global occurrence of C. imicola from available literature and to model the global distributions of C. imicola using an ensemble modeling approach by combining climatic, demographic and land cover covariates. Materials and Methods: in this study probabilistic global habitat suitability model for C. imicola was developed using an ensemble modelling technique. The modelling was implemented using R package biomod2. The models developed combine climatic, demographic and land cover covariates to predict the global distribution of C. imicola and to characterize the respective variable contribution. The following sets of input data were used in order to make accurate predictions of the distribution of this species (i) environmental and livestock distribution data which includes climatic, land cover and demographic data; and (ii) a globally comprehensive dataset of geo-positioned occurrence points for C. imicola. Result: The study provided an updated and comprehensive global database of C. imicola occurrence, consisting of 1039 geo-positioned records from 50 countries around the world. The ensemble model performed very well and indicated high environmental suitability for C. imicola in the tropics and subtropics. The habitat suitability for C. imicola spans from South Africa to southern Europe and from Southern USA to southern China. Thirty individual models (10 algorithms x 3 evaluation runs) were generated by ‘biomod2’, 21 models scored a true skills statistics (TSS) > 0.8 (TSSaverage = 0.81). These 21 models incorporated weighted runs from RF, GAM, GLM, GBM, CTA, ANN, FDA and MARS algorithms to create a final ensemble model. The distribution of C. imicola is mainly constrained by climatic factors. In this ensemble model, mean annual minimum temperature had the highest overall contribution (42.9%), followed by mean annual maximum temperature (21.1%), solar radiation (13.6%), Annual precipitation (11%), livestock distribution (6.2%), vapor pressure (3.4%), wind speed (0.8%), and land cover (0.1%). Conclusion: the present study provided the most updated and detailed maps of the current global potential distributions of C. imicola using ensemble modeling technique. The result presented here is based on thinned and unbiased and the most extensive C. imicola occurrence dataset created to date, and represents the most updated description of C. imicola distribution. Keywords: AHS, biomod2, Bluetongue (BT), Culicoides imicola, ensemble modelling, Schmallenberg virus Conference: GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data, Davis, United States, 8 Oct - 10 Oct, 2019. Presentation Type: Regular oral presentation Topic: Spatio-temporal surveillance and modeling approaches Citation: Regassa S, Fetene E, Mulatu T, Amenu K, Bedasa M, Beyene T, Negussie H and Revie CW (2019). Global Distribution of Culicoides imicola, a Major Vector of Bluetongue, Schmallenberg and African Horse Sickness Viruses. Front. Vet. Sci. Conference Abstract: GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data. doi: 10.3389/conf.fvets.2019.05.00105 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 20 Jun 2019; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019. * Correspondence: Mx. Samson Leta Regassa, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, samiwude@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Samson Leta Regassa Eyerusalem Fetene Tesfaye Mulatu Kebede Amenu Megersa Bedasa Tariku Jibat Beyene Haileleul Negussie Crawford W Revie Google Samson Leta Regassa Eyerusalem Fetene Tesfaye Mulatu Kebede Amenu Megersa Bedasa Tariku Jibat Beyene Haileleul Negussie Crawford W Revie Google Scholar Samson Leta Regassa Eyerusalem Fetene Tesfaye Mulatu Kebede Amenu Megersa Bedasa Tariku Jibat Beyene Haileleul Negussie Crawford W Revie PubMed Samson Leta Regassa Eyerusalem Fetene Tesfaye Mulatu Kebede Amenu Megersa Bedasa Tariku Jibat Beyene Haileleul Negussie Crawford W Revie Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.