Wing morphology responses to land use change: unveiling variations among opportunistic Phlebotomine sand fly species

Human activities have significantly altered tropical forest landscapes, leading to a concerning trend of biodiversity loss. In the face of such disturbance scenarios, the role of functional traits becomes crucial for species success in these transformed environments. Wing morphology, a key determinant of flight performance, may incur dispersal costs due to land use change, potentially giving rise to resilient and efficient phenotypic patterns in dispersal flight, particularly in insect vectors like Phlebotomine sand flies. Despite ample evidence demonstrating the impact of disturbance on vector occurrence, the specific response of wing morphology to these disturbance processes remains unknown. Here, we examined two opportunistic Phlebotomine sand fly species with contrasting ecological profiles. Our results show that land use change influences wing morphology, but the response is species-specific. The zoophilic Dampfomyia deleoni shifted from narrow wings in conserved forests to broader wings in disturbed habitats, a change that may reduce aerodynamic efficiency but improve dispersal capacity, likely facilitating access to scarcer and spatially segregated blood hosts. In contrast, the Leishmania vector Lutzomyia cruciata maintained stable wing morphology across landscapes. Such stability may reflect not only evolutionary canalization but also life-history trade-offs, where generalists preserve robust morphological traits that ensure success across heterogeneous environments, whereas specialists exhibit greater morphological sensitivity to habitat modification. These contrasting strategies highlight how disturbance-driven morphological responses can shape dispersal dynamics, potentially associated with host-seeking behavior and, ultimately, could modulate the epidemiology of leishmaniasis in modified tropical environments.