Effect of land-use changes on the abundance, distribution, and host-seeking behavior of Aedes arbovirus vectors in oil palm-dominated landscapes, southeastern Côte d’Ivoire
Fig 7
Effects of land-use changes on distribution of Aedes mosquitoes and arboviruses’ transmission risks in oil palm-dominated landscapes in southeastern Côte d’Ivoire.
Human-induced land-use changes into the original tropical rainforests for their conversion in large industrial oil palm plantations have resulted in changes in land-covers creating four ecologically distinct macrohabitats: preserved rainforest (A), polyculture (B), oil palm monoculture (C), and rural housing area (D). The conversion of the original rainforests into large oil palm monoculture has led to the losses of the microhabitats and hosts of forest-dwelling Aedes mosquitoes thus increasing ecological pressure for searching alternative microhabitats and hosts in the three other macrohabitats, preserved rainforest, polyculture, and rural housing areas. Aedes mosquitoes found new microhabitats as anthropogenic containers abundantly encountered in the rural housing area and polyculture where humans (inhabitants and workers) were usually present thus resulting in higher abundance of vectors and high-risks of arboviruses’ transmission in these areas. In contrast, the arboviral transmission risks were very low in the oil palm monoculture due to the lack Aedes mosquitoes, and low in the rainforest due to the low anthropophagy of forest-dwelling Aedes species.