Mosquito-borne diseases are on the rise. While climatic factors have been linked to disease occurrences, they do not explain the non-random spatial distribution in disease outbreaks. Landscape-related factors, such as vegetation structure, likely play a crucial but hitherto unquantified role. We explored how three critically important factors that are associated with mosquito-borne disease outbreaks: microclimate, mosquito abundance and bird communities, vary at the landscape scale. We compared the co-occurrence of these three factors in two contrasting habitat types (forest versus grassland) across five rural locations in the central part of the Netherlands between June and September 2021. Our results show that forest patches provide a more sheltered microclimate, and a higher overall abundance of birds. When accounting for differences in landscape characteristics, we also observed that the number of mosquitoes was higher in isolated forest patches. Our findings indicate that, at the landscape scale, variation in tree cover coincides with suitable microclimate and high Culex pipiens and bird abundance. Overall, these factors can help understand the non-random spatial distribution of mosquito-borne disease outbreaks.

中文翻译：

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鸟类、蚊子和小气候之间的景观水平关联：疾病传播的可能后果？

蚊媒疾病呈上升趋势。虽然气候因素与疾病的发生有关，但它们并不能解释疾病暴发的非随机空间分布。与景观相关的因素，例如植被结构，可能发挥着至关重要但迄今为止尚未量化的作用。我们探讨了与蚊媒疾病爆发相关的三个至关重要的因素：小气候、蚊子丰度和鸟类群落，在景观尺度上如何变化。我们比较了 2021 年 6 月至 9 月期间荷兰中部五个农村地区这三个因素在两种截然不同的栖息地类型（森林与草原）中的共现情况。我们的结果表明，森林斑块提供了更加受庇护的小气候，并且鸟类总体丰度更高。在考虑景观特征的差异时，我们还观察到孤立的森林斑块中的蚊子数量较多。我们的研究结果表明，在景观尺度上，树木覆盖的变化与适宜的小气候以及高淡色库蚊和鸟类丰度相一致。总体而言，这些因素可以帮助了解蚊媒疾病爆发的非随机空间分布。