Date

5-2-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Climate change has significant ecological and societal consequences as evident from the past few decades. It has had a large impact on many species, including vector mosquitoes. Although how climate change impacts mosquitoes of the tropical world has been explored, temperate areas remain inadequately studied. Therefore, the medical and healthcare sectors are underprepared for treating mosquito-borne diseases (EEE and Western Nile virus). Based on a long-term ecological dataset covering the past ~10 years across 45 sites, we streamlined, processed, and subsequently analyzed data by building statistical models to understand changes among mosquito populations in the US in response to climate change. The R-based codes we produced can be applied to in future studies and used by the scientific community. We determined which variables had a significant impact on species richness and abundance of mosquitoes. Climatic variables such as temperature and precipitation had a significant impact on these. Land class also played an important role when interacting with other variables. Findings of our study on impacts of climate change on mosquitoes can be used to generate proactive responses and preventative measures that could mitigate the impacts these may diseases have.

Department

Biological Sciences

Thesis Comittee

Dr. Thilina Surasinghe, Thesis Advisor
Dr. Jonathan Roling, Committee Member
Dr. Michael Carson, Committee Member

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