title: Spatiotemporal Anopheles Population Dynamics, Response to Climatic Conditions: The Case of Chabahar, South Baluchistan, Iran.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  An understanding of the factors that affect the abundance of Anopheline species provides an opportunity to better understand the dynamics of malaria transmission in different regions. Chabahar, located south east of Iran, is the most malarious region in the country.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The main aim of this study was to quantify the spatiotemporal Anopheles population dynamics, response to climatic conditions in Chabahar.
  
  
  METHODS
  Satellite-based and land-based climatic data were used as explanatory variables. Monthly caught mosquitoes in 6 village sites of Chabahar were used as dependent variable. The spatiotemporal associations were first investigated by inspection of scatter plots and single variable regression analysis. A multivariate linear regression model was developed to reveal the association between environmental variables and the monthly mosquito abundance at a 95% confidence level (P ≤ 0.5).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results indicated that Anopheles mosquitoes can be found all year in Chabahar with 2 significant seasonal peaks from March to June (primary peak) and September to November (secondary peak). Results of the present study showed that 0.77 of yearly mosquito abundance emerges in the thermal range of 24°C to 30°C and the humidity range of 0.70 to 0.80 in Chabahar.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  According to the developed multivariate linear model, 0.88 of temporal variance of mosquito abundance, nighttime land surface temperature, and relative humidity of 15 Universal Time Coordinated (18.30 Iran) are the main drivers of mosquito population dynamics in Chabahar.
authors.affiliation: Department of Remote Sensing and GIS, TarbiatModares University, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Manuchehr
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Farajzadeh
authors.affiliation: Department of Climatology, TarbiatModares University, Tehran, Iran. Electronic address: m.halimi@modares.ac.ir.
authors.forename: Mansour
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Halimi
authors.affiliation: Department of Climatology, TarbiatModares University, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Yousef
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ghavidel
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Parasitology and Mycology, Faculty of Medicine, Kashan University of Medical Science, Kashan, Iran.
authors.forename: Mahdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Delavari
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000852:Anopheles; D002980:Climate; D006813:Humidity; D007492:Iran; D016014:Linear Models; D000072138:Mosquito Vectors; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012621:Seasons; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis; D013696:Temperature
keywords: Anopheles mosquito; Chabahar; climatic factors; spatiotemporal association