The impact of climatic variables with GIS application on the abundance of medically important mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Mosquitoes are major harmful insects inside and outside our houses and play an important role in the transmission of the dreadful human and animal diseases. They also annoy humans and animals by their painful and irritating bites. Assessment of the climatic variables and mosquito abundance is important to understand the vector pathogen activity and epidemic risk. It is observed by many workers that the climate has direct effect on the mosquito abundance. The spearman’s correlation values between the mosquito abundance and the climatic factors suggest that there is not a very strong significant relationship between relative humidity, temperature and rainfall with Culex, and Anopheles. There was a moderately positive correlation between dengue fever mosquito Aedes with temperature and relative humidity, but the association was not statistically significant. Correlation of dengue fever mosquito Aedes and Anopheles with wind speed found to be negative, but positive with Culex. With all the three generate correlation is statistically non-significant. The average temperature below 30 0C found to be most suitable for adult mosquito survival and favor their abundance in the area of study. It is revealed that the climatic variables are not very effective to the mosquito abundance in the study area, only congenial environment is effective in increasing the number of mosquitoes. Apart from this, the human behavior and their activities are mostly responsible for flourishing the mosquito species in this area.