Australia’s Dengue Risk: Human Adaptation to Climate Change - Recent Advances and Issues in Environmental Science - page 144

cold temperature limits for Ae. aegypti in Australia, we also assessed two published
theoretical cold temperature limits across Australia. These temperature limit projec-
tions also could not contain all collection sites, which may suggest that in Australia,
climate--and in particular temperature--plays a less important role in determining
the range of this species due to a combination of its intimate relationship with humans
and our propensity to store water. This is where the use of statistical approaches and
point occurrence data to evaluate species' distribution may be weak and integrating
life processes parameters such as the effects of climate on reproduction and larval
development may be more practical and informative.
If it is an assumption that burgeoning domestic water tanks will provide stable
larval sites for Ae. aegypti , then the synthesis of our GARP modeling, the theoretical
climate limits and the historical distribution of this mosquito strongly suggest that
a distributional expansion is possible and could expose the majority of Australia's
population to this dengue vector. Additionally, viewing this synthesis of Ae. aegypti in
Australia with dengue transmission climate limits obtained from historical Australian
dengue epidemics suggests a real risk of dengue transmission occurring in regions
ranging well beyond north Queensland during the summer months.
We conclude that if the installation and maintenance of domestic water storage
tanks is not tightly controlled today, Ae. aegypti could be spread by humans to cohabit
with the majority of Australia's population, presenting a high potential dengue trans-
mission risk during our warm summers.
Current and projected rainfall reduction in southeast Australia has seen the instal-
lation of large numbers of government-subsidized and ad hoc domestic water storage
containers that could create the possibility of the mosquito Ae. aegypti expanding out
of Queensland into southern Australian's urban regions. By assessing the past and cur-
rent distribution of Ae. aegypti in Australia, we construct distributional models for this
dengue vector for our current climate and projected climates for 2030 and 2050. The
resulting mosquito distribution maps are compared to published theoretical tempera-
ture limits for Ae. aegypti and some differences are identifi ed. Nonetheless, synthesiz-
ing our mosquito distribution maps with dengue transmission climate limits derived
from historical dengue epidemics in Australia suggests that the current proliferation
of domestic water storage tanks could easily result in another range expansion of Ae.
aegypti along with the associated dengue risk were the virus to be introduced.

KEYWORDS

• Aedes aegypti

• Epidemic dengue

• Ovipositing sites

• OzClim outputs

• Queensland