Spatiotemporal analysis of sandfly fauna (Diptera: Psychodidae) in an endemic area of visceral leishmaniasis at Pantanal, central South America

BACKGROUND: Environmental changes caused by urbanization can cause alterations in the ecology and behavior of sandflies and in the epidemiology of leishmaniasis. Geotechnological tools allow the analysis and recognition of spatiotemporal patterns by monitoring and mapping risk areas of this vector-borne disease. This study aims to describe the sandfly fauna in the municipality of Corumbá and to compare it with the data described in a three-year period from 1984 to 1986 by Galati. A further aim was to analyze the influence of environmental changes on the composition of the fauna. METHODS: Captures were conducted weekly from April 2012 to March 2013, in intra and peridomicile areas with automatic light traps, from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am. The following indices were calculated for both periods analyzed: Standardized Index of Species Abundance (SISA), Shannon’s diversity index (H) and Pielou’s index (J). The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was extracted from a remote sensing LANDSAT-5 image. RESULTS: In total, 7,370 specimens (6,169 males and 1,201 females) were collected, distributed among 12 species. Lutzomyia cruzi was the most frequent species (93,79%) and the first in the ranking of standardized species abundance index in both studies. The dominance of the species Lu. cruzi in the neighborhoods of Maria Leite and Centro was demonstrated by the low equitability index. The neighborhood of Cristo Redentor had the greatest diversity of sandflies in the present study and the second greatest in the study performed by Galati et al. (Rev Saúde Pública 31:378–390, 1997). Analyzing the satellite images and the NDVI from 1984 and 2010, the largest amount of dense vegetation was found in the neighborhood of Cristo Redentor. CONCLUSIONS: It was, therefore, possible to show how changes caused due to urbanization have affected the density and distribution of Lu. cruzi and other species over time. Moreover, the data suggest that different populations of sandflies adapt in different ways according to environmental conditions and the adaptation does not necessarily depends on the presence of high vegetation cover.