Name: Matheus do Nascimento Dalbem
Type: MSc dissertation
Publication date: 19/02/2020
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| Gustavo Rocha Leite | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| Ana Carolina Loss Rodrigues | External Examiner * |
| Danielle de Oliveira Moreira | External Alternate * |
| Elisandra de Almeida Chiquito | External Alternate * |
| Gustavo Rocha Leite | Advisor * |
Summary: Rhodniini tribe is divided into two genera,
Psammolestes with three species while Rhodnius with twenty
representatives. All of them are admittedly considerable
potential Chagas disease vectors, one of the most dangerous
diseases in Latin America with thousands of underprivileged
people living under the grave risk of contagious. Although in the
last few years the terrible number of people affected by kissing
bugs decreases as public agencies work for it, recent challenges
emerge to be dealing by disease control programs like the
involvement of sylvan kissing bugs who act as a reservoir of
protozoa Trypanosoma cruzi. Ordinarily, Triatominae can be
peculiarly eclectics or specialists in its feeding and habitats
patterns and understand these relations are crucial to progress
on the disease control. The study aimed to verify if the
distribution of eight sylvan species of the Rhodniini tribe is
influenced by the presence of its feeding and habitat sources. To
do so, points of occurrence of all animals and palm trees whoever
were cited as feeding and habitat sources in the literature were
collected and used with Environmental Niche Modelling, niche
overlap and overlap scores techniques as Maxent, ArcGis, and
ENMTools. The results agree with the scientific literature when
kissing bugs of Psammolestes genera are associated with birds in
open woodland, like distribution of Psammolestes coreodes being
highly influenced by presence of Phacellodomus sibilatrix (Score
= 0,82) and in the same way Kissing bugs of Rhodnius genera being
associated with Palms trees, like distribution of Rhodnius
brethesi being highly modulated by Palm tree Leopoldinia piassaba
(Score = 0,81). To describe the importance of feeding and
habitats sources to distribution of Kissing bugs are extremely
required because species underestimated by medical efforts are
being noted. Furthermore, these results are crucial because can
help public agencies to orientate actions at this recent
challenge on the control of neglected Chagas disease to maintain
the transmission of Chagas by kissing bugs at minimum risk.
