Ecological niche modeling and other tools for the study of avian malaria distribution in the neotropics: A short literature review

Abstract

Identifying the mechanisms driving the distribution, diversity, and structure of parasite assemblages is critical to understand host-parasite evolution, community dynamics, and disease transmission risk. However, despite their global distribution, the broad-scale environmental factors that can affect avian haemosporidian transmission remain only partially understood across avian communities in the Neotropics. With the recent technological advances in satellite imagery, computer modeling, and molecular biology, we are now capable of studying infectious diseases in an integrated fashion over diverse spatial scales. From this perspective, ecological niche modeling (ENM) and species distribution modeling (SDM) represent useful tools to study vector-borne diseases, emphasizing the role of environmental factors in constraining their geographic distributions. Herein, we present a review of studies that have implemented modeling approaches, particularly correlative methods commonly used in ENM and SDM, to assess questions of either parasites, vectors, or host species in avian malaria. We identify that most commonly approached topics include the description of geographic distributions (biogeography), population demography, and structure of the host communities (ecology), and in low proportion, other important topics include climate change effects and potential risk for invasions. We observed that most studies were performed from local-to-regional scales and were concentrated mainly on vectors, followed by a combination of parasites and hosts. The correlative algorithm used was mainly Maxent; however, other statistical analyses included spatial regressions, smoothing procedures, and more conventional multivariate regressions developed chiefly on environmental dimensions. To date, applications of these approaches to the understanding of the geography and ecology of vector-borne diseases are in early stages. Diverse challenges related to theoretical and empirical advances, as well as the need for more (organized) data, still remain poorly explored. We present an adaptation of the Biotic-Abiotic-Mobility (BAM) framework to describe new potential arrangements in the context of this complex epidemiological/epizootiological systems. We hope this review can be useful to provide the basic knowledge and guidance for modeling of ecological niches on avian haemosporidian systems.