Background: High quality mosquito surveys that collect fine resolution local data on
mosquito species’ abundances provide baseline data to help us understand potential
host-pathogen-mosquito relationships, accurately predict disease transmission, and
target mosquito control efforts in areas at risk of mosquito borne diseases.

Methods: As part of an investigation into arboviral sylvatic cycles on the Caribbean
island of St. Kitts, we carried out an island wide mosquito survey from November 2017
to March 2019. Using Biogents Sentinel 2 and miniature CDC light traps that were set
monthly and run for 48 hour intervals, we collected mosquitoes from a total of 30 sites
distributed across the five common land covers on the island (agricultural, mangrove,
rainforest, scrub, and urban). We developed a mixed effects negative binomial
regression model to predict the effects of land cover, seasonality, and precipitation on
observed counts of the most abundant mosquito species we found.

Results: We captured 10 of the 14 mosquito species reported on the island, the four
most abundant being Aedes taeniorhynchus , Culex quinquefasciatus , Aedes
aegpyti , and Deinocerites magnus. Sampling in the mangroves yielded the most
mosquitoes, with Ae. taeniorhynchus, Cx. quinquefasciatus, and De. magnus
predominating. Aedes aegypti was recovered primarily from urban and agricultural
habitats, but also at lower frequency in other land covers. Psorophora pygmaea and
Toxorhynchites guadeloupensis were only captured in scrub habitat. Capture rates in
rainforests were low. Our models indicated the relative abundance of the four most
common species varied seasonally and with land cover. They also suggested that the
extent to which monthly average precipitation influenced counts varied according to
species.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates there is high seasonality in mosquito
abundances and that land cover influenced the distribution and abundance of mosquito
species on St. Kitts. Further, human-adapted mosquito species (e.g. Ae. aegypti and
Cx. quinquefasciatus ) that are known vectors for many human relevant pathogens are
the most wide-spread (across land covers) and the least responsive to seasonal
variation in precipitation.

Excel files, HTML document, r and rmd files for modelling scripts

Diversity_Analysis.r  

SKmosq.Rmd   

SKmosq.html   

dat7.csv   

lc.csv