Murine typhus is a flea-borne zoonotic disease that has been recently reported on Reunion Island,... more Murine typhus is a flea-borne zoonotic disease that has been recently reported on Reunion Island, an oceanic volcanic island located in the Indian Ocean. Five years of survey implemented by the regional public health services have highlighted a strong temporal and spatial structure of the disease in humans, with cases mainly reported during the humid season and restricted to the dry southern and western portions of the island. We explored the environmental component of this zoonosis in an attempt to decipher the drivers of disease transmission. To do so, we used data from a previously published study (599 small mammals and 175Xenopsyllafleas from 29 sampling sites) in order to model the spatial distribution of rat fleas throughout the island. In addition, we carried out a longitudinal sampling of rats and their ectoparasites over a 12 months period in six study sites (564 rats and 496Xenopsyllafleas) in order to model the temporal dynamics of flea infestation of rats. Generalized Li...
Modelling spatial dynamics may be used to gather understanding on how insect populations develop ... more Modelling spatial dynamics may be used to gather understanding on how insect populations develop in a given environment. Hypotheses and independent knowledge inferred from ground observations can be confronted for consistency, and the mechanisms requiring finer descriptions can also be identified. Different scenarios of pest management can then be simulated and the possible consequences of the measures taken assessed. However, spatial dynamics are expressions of multiple and complex ongoing processes, and their modelling at different temporal and spatial scales remains a challenging task. Various approaches have been proposed to address this, including cellular automata, agent-based systems, discrete event systems, system dynamics and geographic information systems, each displaying specific benefits in some domains of application, and weaknesses in others. In this area of research, we are exploring an approach based on the manipulation of graphs (mathematical object expressing a set...
The expansion of mosquito species worldwide is creating a powerful network for the spread of arbo... more The expansion of mosquito species worldwide is creating a powerful network for the spread of arboviruses. In addition to the destruction of breeding sites (prevention) and mass trapping, methods based on the sterile insect technique (SIT), the autodissemination of pyriproxyfen (ADT), and a fusion of elements from both of these known as boosted SIT (BSIT), are being developed to meet the urgent need for effective vector control. However, the comparative potential of these methods has yet to be explored in different environments. This is needed to propose and integrate informed guidelines into sustainable mosquito management plans. We extended a weather-dependent model of Aedes albopictus population dynamics to assess the effectiveness of these different vector control methods, alone or in combination, in a tropical (Reunion island, southwest Indian Ocean) and a temperate (Montpellier area, southern France) climate. Our results confirm the potential efficiency of SIT in temperate clim...
Purpose: Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is a mosquito-borne zoonosis endemic in Africa. Since 193... more Purpose: Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is a mosquito-borne zoonosis endemic in Africa. Since 1930, outbreaks have occurred in tropical, hot-irrigated or arid ecosystems. In 2008-2009, an outbreak occurred in a temperate and mountainous area of Madagascar highlands. We conducted a 3-year serological follow-up in cattle in a pilot area of these highlands (894 bovine in 2009, 516 in 2010 and 210 in 2011). Cattle exchange and vector population dynamics were investigated. Despite unfavourable climatic conditions and absence of Aedes mosquitoes (main vectors in Africa), results showed that the virus kept circulating till 2011 in absence of clinical cases. The objective of this study was to understand the mechanisms allowing the virus to circulate in this unfavourable ecosystem. We propose a model coupling cattle exchange practices and vector-borne transmission to explain the RVFV spread and persistence in this area. Methods: The model is parameterized to reproduce the local conditions of...
Reunion Island regularly faces outbreaks of epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD) and bluetongue (... more Reunion Island regularly faces outbreaks of epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD) and bluetongue (BT), two viral diseases transmitted by haematophagous midges of the genus Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae). To date, only 5 species of Culicoides are recorded in Reunion Island: Culicoides imicola, C. bolitinos, C. enderleini, C. grahamii, and C. kibatiensis. Among these, at least the first three have been implicated in the transmission of BT and EHD viruses to ruminants. Since January 2016, biweekly monitoring using OVI traps have been set up in 10 sites to study the temporal dynamics of each species. A hurdle model (i.e. a logistic regression presence/ absence model combined with a zero-truncated negative binomial mixed effect abundance model) was developed for each species in order to obtain first insights regarding the climatic and environmental determinants driving presence/absence and abundance of Culicoides. Our first results show that temperature, wind speed, vegetation inde...
Context. Mosquitoes are vectors of major pathogens worldwide, such as the pathogens of Malaria, C... more Context. Mosquitoes are vectors of major pathogens worldwide, such as the pathogens of Malaria, Chikungunya, dengue, Rift Valley or Wes t Nile fevers. Accurate understanding and prediction of mosquito population dynamics are needed to optimize surveillance and control of mosquito-borne diseases. Objectives. This study had two main objectives i) understanding the relationships between env ironmental conditions and mosquito population dynamics to predict mosquito densities and ii) developing operational tools for surveillance and control of vector-borne diseases, taking the example of Aedes albopictus in Reunion Island. Methods. We developed different models using respectively process-based and data-based approaches to study the relationships between meteorological variables (daily temperature and rainfall), land cover classification derived from SPOT-6 imagery, and entomological collections of Aedes albopictus larvae from 9 sites located around the Island. The best models were implem...
We have developed an explicit spatial and temporal model to predict the population dynamics and d... more We have developed an explicit spatial and temporal model to predict the population dynamics and dispersal of the two main mosquito vector species (Aedes vexans and Culex poicilipes) involved in Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) transmission in Senegal (western Africa). Covering an area of 11x10 km around the village of Barkedji, and located in the Ferlo valley (Northern Senegal), the study area is characterized by a complex and dense network of water bodies and ponds that are filled by rainfall during the rainy season (from July to mid- October). These water bodies are known to be the principal mosquito breeding sites in the area. A spatial diffusion model (Raffy and Tran, 2005) is applied in combination with a vector population dynamic model (Soti et al., 2009), and which takes into account the hydrological conditions of the system (Soti et al., submitted). The vector population dynamic model has been more specifically derived from Porphyre et al. (2005). Daily mosquito abundance for ...
The unexpected Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa in 2014 involving the Zaire ebolavirus made cl... more The unexpected Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa in 2014 involving the Zaire ebolavirus made clear that other regions outside Central Africa, its previously documented niche, were at risk of future epidemics. The complex transmission cycle and a lack of epidemiological data make mapping areas at risk of the disease challenging. We used a Geographic Information System-based multicriteria evaluation (GIS-MCE), a knowledge-based approach, to identify areas suitable for Ebola virus spillover to humans in regions of Guinea, Congo and Gabon where Ebola viruses already emerged. We identified environmental, climatic and anthropogenic risk factors and potential hosts from a literature review. Geographical data layers, representing risk factors, were combined to produce suitability maps of Ebola virus spillover at the landscape scale. Our maps show high spatial and temporal variability in the suitability for Ebola virus spillover at a fine regional scale. Reported spillover events fell in a...
Background: Reunion Island regularly faces outbreaks of bluetongue and epizootic hemorrhagic dise... more Background: Reunion Island regularly faces outbreaks of bluetongue and epizootic hemorrhagic diseases, two insect-borne orbiviral diseases of ruminants. Hematophagous midges of the genus Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) are the vectors of bluetongue (BTV) and epizootic hemorrhagic diseases of deer (EHDV) viruses. In a previous study, statistical models based on environmental and meteorological data were developed for the five Culicoides species present in the island to provide a better understanding of their ecology and predict their presence and abundance. The purpose of this study was to couple these statistical models with a Geographic Information System (GIS) in order to produce dynamic maps of the distribution of Culicoides throughout the island. Methods: Based on meteorological data from ground weather stations and satellite-derived environmental data, the abundance of each Culicoides species was estimated for the 2,214 husbandry locations on the island for the period ran...
Rift Valley fever (RVF) is endemic in northern Senegal, a Sahelian area characterized by a tempor... more Rift Valley fever (RVF) is endemic in northern Senegal, a Sahelian area characterized by a temporary pond network that drive both RVF mosquito population dynamics and nomadic herd movements. To investigate the mechanisms that explain RVF recurrent circulation, we modelled a realistic epidemiological system at the pond level integrating vector population dynamics, resident and nomadic ruminant herd population dynamics, and nomadic herd movements recorded in Younoufere area [1]. To calibrate the model, serological surveys were performed in 2015-2016 on both resident and nomadic herds in the same area. Mosquito population dynamics were obtained from a published model trained in the same region [2]. Model comparison techniques were used to compare five different scenarios of virus introduction by nomadic herds associated or not with vertical transmission in Aedes vexans. Our serological results confirmed a long lasting RVF endemicity in resident herds (IgG seroprevalence rate of 15.3%, ...
The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 (HPAI) virus is now considered endemic in several Asia... more The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 (HPAI) virus is now considered endemic in several Asian countries. In Cambodia, the virus has been circulating in the poultry population since 2004, with a dramatic effect on farmers' livelihoods and public health. In Thailand, surveillance and control are still important to prevent any new H5N1 incursion. Risk mapping can contribute effectively to disease surveillance and control systems, but is a very challenging task in the absence of reliable disease data. In this work, we used spatial multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) to produce risk maps for HPAI H5N1 in poultry. We aimed to i) evaluate the performance of the MCDA approach to predict areas suitable for H5N1 based on a dataset from Thailand, comparing the predictive capacities of two sources of a priori knowledge (literature and experts), and ii) apply the best method to produce a risk map for H5N1 in poultry in Cambodia. Our results showed that the expert-based model had a ve...
Landscape ecology is seldom used in epidemiology. The aim of this study is to assess the possible... more Landscape ecology is seldom used in epidemiology. The aim of this study is to assess the possible improvements that can be derived from the use of landscape approaches on several scales when exploring local differences in disease distribution, using bluetongue (BT) in Corsica as an example. The environment of BT-free and BT-infected sheep farms is described on a fine scale, using high resolution satellite images and a digital elevation model. Land-coverage is characterised by classifying the satellite image. Landscape metrics are calculated to quantify the number, diversity, length of edge and connectance of vegetation patches. The environment is described for three sizes of buffers around the farms. The models are tested with and without landscape metrics to see if such metrics improve the models. Internal and external validation of the models is performed and the relative impact of scale versus variables on the discriminatory ability of the models is explored. Results show that fo...
Murine typhus is a flea-borne zoonotic disease that has been recently reported on Reunion Island,... more Murine typhus is a flea-borne zoonotic disease that has been recently reported on Reunion Island, an oceanic volcanic island located in the Indian Ocean. Five years of survey implemented by the regional public health services have highlighted a strong temporal and spatial structure of the disease in humans, with cases mainly reported during the humid season and restricted to the dry southern and western portions of the island. We explored the environmental component of this zoonosis in an attempt to decipher the drivers of disease transmission. To do so, we used data from a previously published study (599 small mammals and 175Xenopsyllafleas from 29 sampling sites) in order to model the spatial distribution of rat fleas throughout the island. In addition, we carried out a longitudinal sampling of rats and their ectoparasites over a 12 months period in six study sites (564 rats and 496Xenopsyllafleas) in order to model the temporal dynamics of flea infestation of rats. Generalized Li...
Modelling spatial dynamics may be used to gather understanding on how insect populations develop ... more Modelling spatial dynamics may be used to gather understanding on how insect populations develop in a given environment. Hypotheses and independent knowledge inferred from ground observations can be confronted for consistency, and the mechanisms requiring finer descriptions can also be identified. Different scenarios of pest management can then be simulated and the possible consequences of the measures taken assessed. However, spatial dynamics are expressions of multiple and complex ongoing processes, and their modelling at different temporal and spatial scales remains a challenging task. Various approaches have been proposed to address this, including cellular automata, agent-based systems, discrete event systems, system dynamics and geographic information systems, each displaying specific benefits in some domains of application, and weaknesses in others. In this area of research, we are exploring an approach based on the manipulation of graphs (mathematical object expressing a set...
The expansion of mosquito species worldwide is creating a powerful network for the spread of arbo... more The expansion of mosquito species worldwide is creating a powerful network for the spread of arboviruses. In addition to the destruction of breeding sites (prevention) and mass trapping, methods based on the sterile insect technique (SIT), the autodissemination of pyriproxyfen (ADT), and a fusion of elements from both of these known as boosted SIT (BSIT), are being developed to meet the urgent need for effective vector control. However, the comparative potential of these methods has yet to be explored in different environments. This is needed to propose and integrate informed guidelines into sustainable mosquito management plans. We extended a weather-dependent model of Aedes albopictus population dynamics to assess the effectiveness of these different vector control methods, alone or in combination, in a tropical (Reunion island, southwest Indian Ocean) and a temperate (Montpellier area, southern France) climate. Our results confirm the potential efficiency of SIT in temperate clim...
Purpose: Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is a mosquito-borne zoonosis endemic in Africa. Since 193... more Purpose: Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is a mosquito-borne zoonosis endemic in Africa. Since 1930, outbreaks have occurred in tropical, hot-irrigated or arid ecosystems. In 2008-2009, an outbreak occurred in a temperate and mountainous area of Madagascar highlands. We conducted a 3-year serological follow-up in cattle in a pilot area of these highlands (894 bovine in 2009, 516 in 2010 and 210 in 2011). Cattle exchange and vector population dynamics were investigated. Despite unfavourable climatic conditions and absence of Aedes mosquitoes (main vectors in Africa), results showed that the virus kept circulating till 2011 in absence of clinical cases. The objective of this study was to understand the mechanisms allowing the virus to circulate in this unfavourable ecosystem. We propose a model coupling cattle exchange practices and vector-borne transmission to explain the RVFV spread and persistence in this area. Methods: The model is parameterized to reproduce the local conditions of...
Reunion Island regularly faces outbreaks of epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD) and bluetongue (... more Reunion Island regularly faces outbreaks of epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD) and bluetongue (BT), two viral diseases transmitted by haematophagous midges of the genus Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae). To date, only 5 species of Culicoides are recorded in Reunion Island: Culicoides imicola, C. bolitinos, C. enderleini, C. grahamii, and C. kibatiensis. Among these, at least the first three have been implicated in the transmission of BT and EHD viruses to ruminants. Since January 2016, biweekly monitoring using OVI traps have been set up in 10 sites to study the temporal dynamics of each species. A hurdle model (i.e. a logistic regression presence/ absence model combined with a zero-truncated negative binomial mixed effect abundance model) was developed for each species in order to obtain first insights regarding the climatic and environmental determinants driving presence/absence and abundance of Culicoides. Our first results show that temperature, wind speed, vegetation inde...
Context. Mosquitoes are vectors of major pathogens worldwide, such as the pathogens of Malaria, C... more Context. Mosquitoes are vectors of major pathogens worldwide, such as the pathogens of Malaria, Chikungunya, dengue, Rift Valley or Wes t Nile fevers. Accurate understanding and prediction of mosquito population dynamics are needed to optimize surveillance and control of mosquito-borne diseases. Objectives. This study had two main objectives i) understanding the relationships between env ironmental conditions and mosquito population dynamics to predict mosquito densities and ii) developing operational tools for surveillance and control of vector-borne diseases, taking the example of Aedes albopictus in Reunion Island. Methods. We developed different models using respectively process-based and data-based approaches to study the relationships between meteorological variables (daily temperature and rainfall), land cover classification derived from SPOT-6 imagery, and entomological collections of Aedes albopictus larvae from 9 sites located around the Island. The best models were implem...
We have developed an explicit spatial and temporal model to predict the population dynamics and d... more We have developed an explicit spatial and temporal model to predict the population dynamics and dispersal of the two main mosquito vector species (Aedes vexans and Culex poicilipes) involved in Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) transmission in Senegal (western Africa). Covering an area of 11x10 km around the village of Barkedji, and located in the Ferlo valley (Northern Senegal), the study area is characterized by a complex and dense network of water bodies and ponds that are filled by rainfall during the rainy season (from July to mid- October). These water bodies are known to be the principal mosquito breeding sites in the area. A spatial diffusion model (Raffy and Tran, 2005) is applied in combination with a vector population dynamic model (Soti et al., 2009), and which takes into account the hydrological conditions of the system (Soti et al., submitted). The vector population dynamic model has been more specifically derived from Porphyre et al. (2005). Daily mosquito abundance for ...
The unexpected Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa in 2014 involving the Zaire ebolavirus made cl... more The unexpected Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa in 2014 involving the Zaire ebolavirus made clear that other regions outside Central Africa, its previously documented niche, were at risk of future epidemics. The complex transmission cycle and a lack of epidemiological data make mapping areas at risk of the disease challenging. We used a Geographic Information System-based multicriteria evaluation (GIS-MCE), a knowledge-based approach, to identify areas suitable for Ebola virus spillover to humans in regions of Guinea, Congo and Gabon where Ebola viruses already emerged. We identified environmental, climatic and anthropogenic risk factors and potential hosts from a literature review. Geographical data layers, representing risk factors, were combined to produce suitability maps of Ebola virus spillover at the landscape scale. Our maps show high spatial and temporal variability in the suitability for Ebola virus spillover at a fine regional scale. Reported spillover events fell in a...
Background: Reunion Island regularly faces outbreaks of bluetongue and epizootic hemorrhagic dise... more Background: Reunion Island regularly faces outbreaks of bluetongue and epizootic hemorrhagic diseases, two insect-borne orbiviral diseases of ruminants. Hematophagous midges of the genus Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) are the vectors of bluetongue (BTV) and epizootic hemorrhagic diseases of deer (EHDV) viruses. In a previous study, statistical models based on environmental and meteorological data were developed for the five Culicoides species present in the island to provide a better understanding of their ecology and predict their presence and abundance. The purpose of this study was to couple these statistical models with a Geographic Information System (GIS) in order to produce dynamic maps of the distribution of Culicoides throughout the island. Methods: Based on meteorological data from ground weather stations and satellite-derived environmental data, the abundance of each Culicoides species was estimated for the 2,214 husbandry locations on the island for the period ran...
Rift Valley fever (RVF) is endemic in northern Senegal, a Sahelian area characterized by a tempor... more Rift Valley fever (RVF) is endemic in northern Senegal, a Sahelian area characterized by a temporary pond network that drive both RVF mosquito population dynamics and nomadic herd movements. To investigate the mechanisms that explain RVF recurrent circulation, we modelled a realistic epidemiological system at the pond level integrating vector population dynamics, resident and nomadic ruminant herd population dynamics, and nomadic herd movements recorded in Younoufere area [1]. To calibrate the model, serological surveys were performed in 2015-2016 on both resident and nomadic herds in the same area. Mosquito population dynamics were obtained from a published model trained in the same region [2]. Model comparison techniques were used to compare five different scenarios of virus introduction by nomadic herds associated or not with vertical transmission in Aedes vexans. Our serological results confirmed a long lasting RVF endemicity in resident herds (IgG seroprevalence rate of 15.3%, ...
The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 (HPAI) virus is now considered endemic in several Asia... more The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 (HPAI) virus is now considered endemic in several Asian countries. In Cambodia, the virus has been circulating in the poultry population since 2004, with a dramatic effect on farmers' livelihoods and public health. In Thailand, surveillance and control are still important to prevent any new H5N1 incursion. Risk mapping can contribute effectively to disease surveillance and control systems, but is a very challenging task in the absence of reliable disease data. In this work, we used spatial multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) to produce risk maps for HPAI H5N1 in poultry. We aimed to i) evaluate the performance of the MCDA approach to predict areas suitable for H5N1 based on a dataset from Thailand, comparing the predictive capacities of two sources of a priori knowledge (literature and experts), and ii) apply the best method to produce a risk map for H5N1 in poultry in Cambodia. Our results showed that the expert-based model had a ve...
Landscape ecology is seldom used in epidemiology. The aim of this study is to assess the possible... more Landscape ecology is seldom used in epidemiology. The aim of this study is to assess the possible improvements that can be derived from the use of landscape approaches on several scales when exploring local differences in disease distribution, using bluetongue (BT) in Corsica as an example. The environment of BT-free and BT-infected sheep farms is described on a fine scale, using high resolution satellite images and a digital elevation model. Land-coverage is characterised by classifying the satellite image. Landscape metrics are calculated to quantify the number, diversity, length of edge and connectance of vegetation patches. The environment is described for three sizes of buffers around the farms. The models are tested with and without landscape metrics to see if such metrics improve the models. Internal and external validation of the models is performed and the relative impact of scale versus variables on the discriminatory ability of the models is explored. Results show that fo...
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Papers by Annelise Tran