Fig 1.
Thresholded potential distribution maps for Leishmania major, Phlebotomus papatasi, and four candidate mammal reservoir species potentially associated with the zoonotic transmission of cutaneous leishmaniasis.
Models were calibrated across sampled areas (S), and transferred across all Libya. Blue points are occurrences, pink areas are modeled suitable conditions, and gray areas are unsuitable conditions.
Table 1.
Results of partial ROC analysis to test statistical significance of ecological niche model predictions.
A value of 1.0 is equivalent to the performance of a random classifier. These results were based on 100 bootstrap replicates, and statistical significance was assessed via bootstrapping and comparison with a random classifier ratio of 1.0.
Fig 2.
Relationship of ecological niche modeling predictions to the distribution of 98 sites with L. major cases reported by the Libyan National Centre for Disease Control in recent outbreaks across Libya.
The blue dotted circle represented localities where these independent data were collected, and pink represent the belt predicted suitable for the Leishmania major.
Fig 3.
Visualization of Leishmania major, and Phlebotomus papatasi ecological niches in example dimensions.
Overall set of environments available across Libya in gray; modeled suitable conditions for the species occurrences in pink. Similar visualizations of ecological niches for the potential mammal reservoir species are in the Supporting Information (S4 File).
Fig 4.
Example background similarity tests showing overall niche overlap between ecological niche models for pairs of species: (A) Leishmania major—Phlebotomus papatasi and (B) Leishmania major –Meriones libycus.
The vertical purple line shows observed niche overlap, and the histograms show the distribution of the background similarity values among 100 random replicates, for the I and D similarity metrics. On the maps, red and blue shading indicates the modeled suitable areas for the two species; purple shading shows areas of overlap between the two species. Results for other species are given in the Supporting Information (S5 File).
Fig 5.
Visualization of ecological niches of Leishmania major, Phlebotomus papatasi, and animal reservoir in three environmental dimensions (PC1, PC2, and PC3).
Niches are represented as minimum volume ellipsoids to illustrate the limits under which the species has been sampled. Gray shading represents environmental background, green ellipsoid represents the potential mammal reservoir, yellow is the vector Phlebotomus papatasi, and purple represents Leishmania major.
Fig 6.
Relationship of additional independent human case records to the areas where pairs of vector Phlebotomus papatasi and mammal reservoir species can occur.
Green areas are areas of overlap between P. papatasi and each of the potential mammal reservoirs; white dotted circle represent localities where human cases were predicted successfully; blue dotted circles indicate case records not predicted successfully by the model combination.