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The Use of Ecological Niche Modeling to Infer Potential Risk Areas of Snakebite in the Mexican State of Veracruz
Yáñez-Arenas, Carlos Peterson, A. Townsend Mokondoko, Pierre Rojas-Soto, Octavio MartÃnez-Meyer, Enrique
Yáñez-Arenas, Carlos
Peterson, A. Townsend
Mokondoko, Pierre
Rojas-Soto, Octavio
MartÃnez-Meyer, Enrique
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Abstract
Background
Many authors have claimed that snakebite risk is associated with human population density, human activities, and snake behavior. Here we analyzed whether environmental suitability of vipers can be used as an indicator of snakebite risk. We tested several hypotheses to explain snakebite incidence, through the construction of models incorporating both environmental suitability and socioeconomic variables in Veracruz, Mexico.
Methodology/Principal Findings
Ecological niche modeling (ENM) was used to estimate potential geographic and ecological distributions of nine viper species' in Veracruz. We calculated the distance to the species' niche centroid (DNC); this distance may be associated with a prediction of abundance. We found significant inverse relationships between snakebites and DNCs of common vipers (Crotalus simus and Bothrops asper), explaining respectively 15% and almost 35% of variation in snakebite incidence. Additionally, DNCs for these two vipers, in combination with marginalization of human populations, accounted for 76% of variation in incidence.
Conclusions/Significance
Our results suggest that niche modeling and niche-centroid distance approaches can be used to mapping distributions of environmental suitability for venomous snakes; combining this ecological information with socioeconomic factors may help with inferring potential risk areas for snakebites, since hospital data are often biased (especially when incidences are low).
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Date
2014-06-24
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Public Library of Science
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Citation
Yañez-Arenas, Carlos; A. Townsend Peterson, Pierre Mokondoko, Octavio Rojas-Soto, Enrique MartÃnez-Meyer. " The Use of Ecological Niche Modeling to Infer Potential Risk Areas of Snakebite in the Mexican State of Veracruz." PLoS One. 2014; 9(6): e100957. Published online 2014 June 25. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0100957