Costa Rica mosquito community species occurrence and site environmental data, July - August 2017

Land use change is an important driver of both biodiversity loss and
zoonotic disease transmission in tropical countryside landscapes.
Developing solutions for protecting biodiversity, public health, and
livelihoods in working landscapes requires understanding the spatial
scales at which habitat characteristics such as land cover shape
biodiversity, especially for arthropods that transmit pathogens. A growing
body of evidence shows that species richness for many taxa correlates with
tree cover at small spatial scales of <100 m, indicating that local
tree cover management is a promising conservation tool. To investigate
whether mosquito species richness, community composition, and presence of
specific disease vector species respond to tree cover—and if so, whether
at spatial scales similar to other taxa—we surveyed mosquito communities
along a tree cover gradient and across agricultural, residential, and
forested land uses in rural southern Costa Rica. We found that tree cover
was both positively correlated with mosquito species richness and
negatively correlated with the presence of the common invasive dengue
vector Aedes albopictus, particularly at small spatial scales of 80 –
200m. Beyond tree cover, land use type predicted community composition and
Ae. albopictus presence, but not species richness. The results suggest
that preservation and expansion of tree cover at local scales can protect
biodiversity for a wide range of taxa and also confer protection against
disease vector occurrence.