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Sustainable Development Goals
03 Saúde e Bem-EstarCollections
- IOC - Artigos de Periódicos [12874]
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SIMULATING POPULATION GENETICS OF PATHOGEN VECTORS IN CHANGING LANDSCAPES: GUIDELINES AND APPLICATION WITH TRIATOMA BRASILIENSIS
Author
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BEI-UR072, IRD. Gif-sur-Yvette, France / LEGS-UPR9034, CNRS-UPSud11, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Biodiversidade Entomológica. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
UNESP. Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas. Departamento de Ciências Biológicas. Araraquara, SP, Brasil.
BEI-UR072, IRD. Gif-sur-Yvette, France / LEGS-UPR9034, CNRS-UPSud11, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
LEGS-UPR9034, CNRS-UPSud11, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
BEI-UR072, IRD. Gif-sur-Yvette, France / LEGS-UPR9034, CNRS-UPSud11, Gif-sur-Yvette, France / Universidad Mayor San Andrés. Instituto de Ecologıa. Campus Cotacota. La Paz, Bolívia.
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Laboratório de Biodiversidade Entomológica. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.
UNESP. Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas. Departamento de Ciências Biológicas. Araraquara, SP, Brasil.
BEI-UR072, IRD. Gif-sur-Yvette, France / LEGS-UPR9034, CNRS-UPSud11, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
LEGS-UPR9034, CNRS-UPSud11, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
BEI-UR072, IRD. Gif-sur-Yvette, France / LEGS-UPR9034, CNRS-UPSud11, Gif-sur-Yvette, France / Universidad Mayor San Andrés. Instituto de Ecologıa. Campus Cotacota. La Paz, Bolívia.
Abstract
Background: Understanding the mechanisms that influence the population dynamics and spatial genetic structure of the
vectors of pathogens infecting humans is a central issue in tropical epidemiology. In view of the rapid changes in the
features of landscape pathogen vectors live in, this issue requires new methods that consider both natural and human
systems and their interactions. In this context, individual-based model (IBM) simulations represent powerful yet poorly
developed approaches to explore the response of pathogen vectors in heterogeneous social-ecological systems, especially
when field experiments cannot be performed.
Methodology/Principal Findings: We first present guidelines for the use of a spatially explicit IBM, to simulate population
genetics of pathogen vectors in changing landscapes. We then applied our model with Triatoma brasiliensis, originally
restricted to sylvatic habitats and now found in peridomestic and domestic habitats, posing as the most important
Trypanosoma cruzi vector in Northeastern Brazil. We focused on the effects of vector migration rate, maximum dispersal
distance and attraction by domestic habitat on T. brasiliensis population dynamics and spatial genetic structure. Optimized
for T. brasiliensis using field data pairwise fixation index (FST) from microsatellite loci, our simulations confirmed the
importance of these three variables to understand vector genetic structure at the landscape level. We then ran prospective
scenarios accounting for land-use change (deforestation and urbanization), which revealed that human-induced land-use
change favored higher genetic diversity among sampling points.
Conclusions/Significance: Our work shows that mechanistic models may be useful tools to link observed patterns with
processes involved in the population genetics of tropical pathogen vectors in heterogeneous social-ecological landscapes.
Our hope is that our study may provide a testable and applicable modeling framework to a broad community of
epidemiologists for formulating scenarios of landscape change consequences on vector dynamics, with potential
implications for their surveillance and control.
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