REFERENCES

01. Roiz D, Pontifes PA, Jourdain F, Diagne C, Leroy B, Vaissière AC, et al. The rising global economic costs of invasive Aedes mosquitoes and Aedes-borne diseases. Sci Total Environ. 2024; 933: 173054. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173054.

02. Pabst R, Sousa CA, Essl F, Garcia-Rodriguez A, Liu D, Lenzner B, et al. Global invasion patterns and dynamics of disease vector mosquitoes. Nat Commun. 2025; 16: 9127. doi: 10.1038/s41467- 025-64446-3.

03. Alarcón-Elbal P, Rodríguez-Sosa M, Newman B, Sutton W. The first record of Aedes vittatus (Diptera: Culicidae) in the Dominican Republic: public health implications of a potential invasive mosquito species in the Americas. J Med Entomol. 2020; 57(6): 2016-21. doi: 10.1093/jme/tjaa128.

04. Pagac BB, Spring AR, Stawicki JR, Dinh TL, Lura T, Kavanaugh MD, et al. Incursion and establishment of the Old World arbovirus vector Aedes (Fredwardsius) vittatus (Bigot, 1861) in the Americas. Acta Trop. 2021; 213: 105739. doi: 10.1016/j.actatropica. 2020.105739.

05. Chan-Chable RJ, Rodríguez-Luna C, Espinal-Palomino R, Ibarra- Cerdeña C. Detection of Aedes (Fredwardsius) vittatus mosquitoes, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, 2025. Emerg Infect Dis. 2025; 31(11): 2177-9. doi: 10.3201/eid3111.251358.

06. Samson DM, Archer RS, Alimi TO, Arheart KK, Impoinvil DE, Oscar R, et al. New baseline environmental assessment of mosquito ecology in northern Haiti during increased urbanization. J Vector Ecol. 2015; 40(1): 46-58. doi: 10.1111/jvec.12131.

07. ARIM - Arthropodes d’intérêt médical. Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD). [cited 2026 Feb 2]. Available from: https://arim.ird.fr/arim/.

08. Schaffner F, Angel G, Geoffroy B, Hervy JP, Rhaiem A, Brunhes J. Les moustiques d’Europe: logiciel d’identification et d’enseignement. CD-ROM. Paris: IRD; 2001.

09. Huang YM, Ward RA. A pictorial key for the identification of the mosquitoes associated with yellow fever in Africa. Mosq Syst. 1981; 13(2): 138-49.

10. Robert V, Ndiaye EH, Rahola N, Le Goff G, Boussès P, Diallo D, et al. Clés illustrées d’identification des moustiques du Burkina Faso, Cap-Vert, Gambie, Mali, Mauritanie, Niger, Sénégal et Tchad. IRD. 2022. doi: 10.23708/fdi:010084866.

11. Huang YM. Medical entomology studies-VIII. Notes on the taxonomic status of Aedes vittatus (Diptera: Culicidae). Contrib Am Entomol Inst. 1977; 14(1): 113-32.

12. Folmer O, Black M, Hoeh W, Lutz R, Vrijenhoek R. DNA primers for amplification of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I from diverse metazoan invertebrates. Mol Mar Biol Biotechnol. 1994; 3(5): 294-99.

13. Camacho C, Coulouris G, Avagyan V, Ma N, Papadoulos J, Bealer K, et al. BLAST+: architecture and applications. BMC Bioinform. 2009; 10: 421. doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-10-421.

14. Katoh K, Rozewicki J, Yamada KD. MAFFT online service: multiple sequence alignment, interactive sequence choice and visualization. Brief Bioinform. 2019; 20: 1160-66. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbx108.

15. Larsson A. AliView: a fast and lightweight alignment viewer and editor for large datasets. Bioinformatics. 2014; 30: 3276-8. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btu531.

16. Miller MA, Pfeiffer W, Schwartz T. Creating the CIPRES Science Gateway for inference of large phylogenetic trees. In: 2010 Gateway Computing Environments Workshop (GCE). New Orleans: IEEE; 2010. p. 1-8. doi: 10.1109/GCE.2010.5676129.

17. Suchard MA, Lemey P, Baele G, Ayres DL, Drummond AJ, Rambaut A. Bayesian phylogenetic and phylodynamic data integration using BEAST 1.10. Virus Evol. 2018; vey016. doi: 10.1093/ve/vey016.

18. Rambaut A, Drummond AJ, Xie D, Baele G, Suchard MA. Posterior summarization in Bayesian phylogenetics using Tracer 1.7. Syst Biol. 2018; 67: 901-04. doi: 10.1093/sysbio/syy032.

19. Rambaut A. FigTree v1.4.4. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh; Institute of Evolutionary Biology. 2018 [cited 2026 May 20]. Available from: https://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/figtree/.

20. Rozas J, Ferrer-Mata A, Sánchez-DelBarrio JC, Guirao-Rico S, Librado P, Ramos-Onsins SE, et al. DnaSP 6: DNA Sequence Polymorphism Analysis of Large Datasets. Mol Biol Evol. 2017; 34: 3299-3302. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msx248.

21. Bandelt HJ, Forster P, Röhl A. Median-joining networks for inferring intraspecific phylogenies. Mol Biol Evol. 1999; 16: 37-48. doi: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a026036.

22. Woolley SM, Posada D, Crandall KA. A comparison of phylogenetic network methods using computer simulation. PLoS One. 2008; 3: e1913. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001913.

23. Leigh JW, Bryant D. PopART: full-feature software for haplotype network construction. Methods Ecol Evol. 2015; 6: 1110-16. doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.12410.

24. Díaz-Martínez I, Diéguez-Fernández L, Santana-Águila B, Atiénzar de la Paz EM, Ruiz-Domínguez D, Alarcón-Elbal PM. Nueva introducción de Aedes vittatus (Diptera: Culicidae) en la región Oriental de Cuba: caracterización ecológica y relevancia médica. InterAm J Med Health. 2021; 4: 10-15. doi: 10.31005/iajmh.v4i.175.

25. González MA, Bravo-Barriga D, Rodríguez-Sosa MA, Rueda J, Frontera E, Alarcón-Elbal PM. Species diversity, habitat distribution, and blood meal analysis of haematophagous dipterans collected by CDC-UV light traps in the Dominican Republic. Pathogens. 2022; 11(7): 714. doi: 10.3390/pathogens11070714.

26. Noble SAA, Ali RL, Wilson-Clarke CF, Khouri NK, Norris DE, Sandiford SL. Detection of invasive Aedes vittatus mosquitoes in Jamaica: molecular identification and surveillance implications. Parasit Vectors. 2025; 18: 469. doi: 10.1186/s13071-025-07066-6.

27. Tzuc-Dzul JC, Garcia-Rejon JE, Cigarroa-Toledo N, Chi-Chim WA, Baak-Baak CM. The first national record of the invasive mosquito Aedes vittatus (Diptera: Culicidae) in Mexico, a threat to public health in continental America. Neotrop Entomol. 2025; 54(1): 112. doi: 10.1007/s13744-025-01330-1.

28. Petersen V, Santana M, Karina-Costa M, Nachbar JJ, Martin-Martin I, Adelman ZN, et al. Aedes (Ochlerotatus) scapularis, Aedes japonicus japonicus, and Aedes (Fredwardsius) vittatus (Diptera: Culicidae): three neglected mosquitoes with potential global health risks. Insects. 2024; 15: 600. doi: 10.3390/insects15080600.

29. Sudeep AB, Shil P. Aedes vittatus (Bigot) mosquito: an emerging threat to public health. J Vector Borne Dis. 2017; 54: 295-300. doi: 10.4103/0972-9062.225833.

30. Diagne CT, Faye O, Guerbois M, Knight R, Diallo D, Faye O, et al. Vector competence of Aedes aegypti and Aedes vittatus (Diptera: Culicidae) from Senegal and Cape Verde Archipelago for West African lineages of Chikungunya virus. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2014; 91(3): 635-41. doi: 10.4269/ajtmh.13-0627.

31. Ng’eno E, Nuñez-Penichet C, Ruiz-Utrilla ZP, Martins PI, Argudo V, Trindade WCF, et al. Potential distribution of Aedes vittatus as an invasive species in North America. PLoS One. 2025; 20(12): e0335534. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0335534.

Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, VOLUME 121 | 2026

Research Articles

Aedes vittatus in Haiti: continued expansion across the Caribbean and implications for the Americas

Daphenide St-Louis^1,2, Philippe Boussès¹, Loîc Talignani¹, Chrystelle Lasica¹, Evens Emmanuel², Frédéric Simard¹, David Roiz^1,3,+

¹Université de Montpellier, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Maladies infectieuses et vecteurs: écologie, génétique, évolution et contrôle, Montpellier, France
²Quisqueya University, Climate Change Research Team, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
³Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha-Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha, Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos, Sanidad y Biotecnología, Ciudad Real, Spain

DOI: 10.1590/0074-02760260238

228 views 139 downloads

Print PDF

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND Aedes vittatus, an emerging invasive species and arboviral vector with high ecological plasticity and dispersal capacity, is expanding in the Caribbean, being detected in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Jamaica and recently in Yucatán, Mexico.
OBJECTIVES This study aimed to provide evidence of the establishment of Ae. vittatus in Haiti.
METHODS Larval surveys were conducted in 18 localities within 12 municipalities in the North and Northeast departments of Haiti. Specimens were identified morphologically and confirmed by COI-based DNA barcoding.
FINDINGS We report, for the first time, the detection of the invasive vector Ae. (Fredwardsius) vittatus in Haiti, confirmed morphologically and molecularly, with the species detected in half of the municipalities sampled. Phylogenetic analyses placed Haitian specimens within a Caribbean/American group, closely related to sequences from Mexico. Additional mosquito species were identified, including first records of Culex garciai and Culex interrogator in Haiti.
MAIN CONCLUSIONS Given its potential role as a vector of chikungunya, dengue, Zika and yellow fever, continued entomological surveillance and early detection in the Caribbean and the Americas are needed.

key words: arboviruses invasive mosquitoes Haiti Chikungunya dengue Aedes vittatus

REFERENCES