Entomological Monitoring and Evaluation: Diverse Transmission Settings of ICEMR Projects Will Require Local and Regional Malaria Elimination Strategies.

The unprecedented global efforts for malaria elimination in the past decade have resulted in altered vectorial systems, vector behaviors, and bionomics. These changes combined with increasingly evident heterogeneities in malaria transmission require innovative vector control strategies in addition to the established practices of long-lasting insecticidal nets and indoor residual spraying. Integrated vector management will require focal and tailored vector control to achieve malaria elimination. This switch of emphasis from universal coverage to universal coverage plus additional interventions will be reliant on improved entomological monitoring and evaluation. In 2010, the National Institutes for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) established a network of malaria research centers termed ICEMRs (International Centers for Excellence in Malaria Research) expressly to develop this evidence base in diverse malaria endemic settings. In this article, we contrast the differing ecology and transmission settings across the ICEMR study locations. In South America, Africa, and Asia, vector biologists are already dealing with many of the issues of pushing to elimination such as highly focal transmission, proportionate increase in the importance of outdoor and crepuscular biting, vector species complexity, and "sub patent" vector transmission.

Nested clade and phylogeographic analyses of the Chagas disease vector Triatoma brasiliensis in Northeast Brazil.

Triatoma brasiliensis (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Triatominae) is the most important Chagas disease vector in the semiarid areas of Northeast Brazil. We analyzed mitochondrial cytochrome b sequence variation among 136 individuals representing 16 populations from across the species' distribution. Neighbor-joining and parsimony tree-building methods were used in conjunction with nested clade analysis to describe the systematics and phylogeography of this species. Our results indicate that T. brasiliensis is composed of four genetically distinct chromatic forms (referred to as brasiliensis, macromelasoma, juazeiro, and melanica) that present inter-population divergence values (0.027-0.119, corrected K2-p) and a pattern of haplotype geographic distribution compatible with the existence of a species complex. As a consequence, such forms can be treated as isolated targets in vector control programs. We were unable to infer what is shaping the population structure of the brasiliensis form as we obtained mutually exclusive causes of structure, namely a barrier to gene flow caused by past population fragmentation, and isolation by distance between populations (which would permit gene flow). We found indication of mitochondrial DNA introgression occurring among forms in putative hybrid zones.