Ecological Niche Modeling of Acanthamoeba in Türkiye

Acanthamoeba, is an opportunistic pathogenic organism with a global distribution and the potential to cause severe human infections. This study primarily aimed to identify the environmental factors influencing the distribution of Acanthamoeba by analyzing various bioclimatic and topographic variables, and to predict their potential current and future distribution under 2070 climate change scenarios using ecological niche modeling based on the MaxEnt algorithm. Niche modeling was performed on 20 water and 20 soil samples collected from hot springs, swimming pools, parks, and agricultural areas. The rates of positive water samples in Afyon and Kütahya were 70 and 50%, respectively. We detected 60 and 100% positive rates of soil samples collected in Afyon and Kütahya, respectively. Niche modeling incorporated 19 bioclimatic variables, with BIO3 (Isothermality), BIO4 (Temperature seasonality), BIO13 (Precipitation of the wettest month), and BIO15 (Precipitation seasonality) identified as the most influential predictors. The model showed high predictive performance, with AUC values of 0.991 and 0.977 for current and future projections, respectively. Results suggest a potential increase in Acanthamoeba distribution in future scenarios, especially in the southwestern region of Afyon and southern Kütahya. These findings highlight the importance of environmental monitoring and genotypic characterization of Acanthamoeba for public health risk assessment.