Identification of Environmental Covariates of West Nile Virus Vector Mosquito Population Abundance

The rapid spread of West Nile virus (WNv) in North America is a major public health concern. Culex pipiens–restuans is the principle mosquito vector of WNv in the northeastern United States while Aedes vexans is an important bridge vector of the virus in this region. Vector mosquito abundance is directly dependent on physical environmental factors that provide mosquito habitats. The objective of this research is to determine landscape elements that explain the population abundance and distribution of WNv vector mosquitoes using stepwise linear regression. We developed a novel approach for examining a large set of landscape variables based on a land use and land cover classification by selecting variables in stages to minimize multicollinearity. We also investigated the distance at which landscape elements influence abundance of vector populations using buffer distances of 200, 400, and 1000 m. Results show landscape effects have a significant impact on Cx. pipiens–estuans population distribution while the effects of landscape features are less important for prediction of Ae. vexans population distributions. Cx. pipiens–restuans population abundance is positively correlated with human population density, housing unit density, and urban land use and land cover classes and negatively correlated with age of dwellings and amount of forested land.