TY  - JOUR
T1  - Arthropod Vectors in a Rapidly Changing World: A Critical Review of Climate, Urban Growth, Land Conversion, and Emerging Disease Risk
A1  - Wei Chen
A1  - Li Zhang
A1  - Hiroshi Tanaka
A1  - Yuki Sato
JF  - Entomology and Applied Science Letters
JO  - Entomol Appl Sci Lett
SN  - 2349-2864
Y1  - 2025
VL  - 12
IS  - 1
DO  - 10.51847/K71pTSkEqx
SP  - 42
EP  - 56
N2  - Arthropod-borne infections are being reshaped by climatic warming, altered rainfall, accelerating urban growth, land conversion, biological invasion, and intensified movement of people and goods. Yet environmental suitability, vector establishment, human exposure, and realised transmission are frequently collapsed into a single narrative of expanding disease risk. This original critical review examines how environmental change redistributes arthropod vectors and modifies seasonality, vectorial capacity, and human–vector contact. It integrates evidence on temperature-dependent mosquito traits, projected and observed range change, urban host preference, deforestation-associated community reorganisation, and the surveillance systems used to detect emerging transmission frontiers. The synthesis identifies three recurring conclusions. First, climatic effects are nonlinear: warming may lengthen transmission windows or enable establishment in cooler regions while reducing suitability where thermal limits are exceeded. Second, urbanisation and land conversion act through specific pathways—including water storage, habitat fragmentation, host availability, mobility, and behavioural adaptation—rather than as uniform exposures. Third, modelled suitability and observed vector presence are necessary but insufficient indicators of disease emergence because pathogen introduction, immunity, control, and surveillance effort remain decisive. The review therefore proposes an evidence chain that separates environmental drivers, vector mechanisms, contact processes, and epidemiological outcomes. Its principal limitation is the heterogeneity of vector–pathogen systems, spatial scales, model structures, and observation quality. Climate-responsive medical entomology should combine mechanistic studies with repeated field surveillance, microclimatic measurement, cross-scale validation, and explicit uncertainty communication. Such integration can improve anticipatory research and proportionate decision support, but it does not by itself establish causal completeness, ecological safety, or operational readiness.
UR  - https://easletters.com/article/arthropod-vectors-in-a-rapidly-changing-world-a-critical-review-of-climate-urban-growth-land-conv-ya4irmqczco8ygc
ER  -