Overview

With the aim of producing a map of environmental suitability for Culex tritaeniorhynchus across JE risk areas in Asia, we collated a comprehensive database of geo-positioned occurrence records for this species. Using an ensemble of boosted regression tree (BRT) models, a surface predicting the environmental suitability for Cx. tritaeniorhynchus at each 5 × 5 km grid square (pixel) was generated for Southern, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia. Each model utilised a dataset of geo-referenced species occurrence, a background dataset of mosquito survey locations where the species was not reported, and a suite of seventeen gridded annual and synoptic environmental and socio-economic covariates. The final model was used to predict environmental suitability for Cx. tritaeniorhynchus at each 5 × 5 km pixel within JE risk areas. A schematic overview of the methods is shown in Fig. 1.

Overview of the methods. White boxes describe a data process, light grey boxes represent an analysis, and dark grey boxes represent final outputs. ‘Point’ data refers to records associated with a location less than 25 km²; ‘Polygon’ data refers to records associated with a location greater than 25 km²