Deforestation, Mosquito Ecology, and Malaria Elimination in the Amazon Region

Mosquito-borne infectious diseases, such as malaria, respond to environmental change in a complex way because the transmission of Plasmodium depends on a set of context-specific ecological and social factors that influence mosquito vectors and humans differently. Malaria continues to be a serious public health problem for populations living in and near the tropical humid forest of the Amazon region, where evidence suggests that deforestation of the Amazon forest has been the main environmental driver of persistent epidemics. In this review, we focus on the impact of increasing forest degradation on the ecology of anopheline vectors and how aspects of mosquito population dynamics, such as abundance and the rate of human-vector contact, may mediate the relationship between environmental transformation and malaria risk. We also discuss the increasingly important role of regional zoonotic malaria. The sustainability of the malaria elimination strategy in the Americas will require a better understanding of the adaptation of mosquitoes to increasing anthropogenic pressures on the Amazon rainforest.