Peridomestic exposure to Borrelia burgdorferi-infected Ixodes scapularis nymphs is considered the dominant means of infection with black-legged tick-borne pathogens in the eastern United States. Population level studies have detected a positive association between the density of infected nymphs and Lyme disease incidence. At a finer spatial scale within endemic communities, studies have focused...

Triatoma dimidiata has been found in several cities and towns of those countries where the insect is a domestic or peridomestic pest. In Central America, urban infestations occur in the capitals of at least five countries. During 2001 and 2002 a survey was carried out in the county of San Rafael, Heredia province, located 15 km northwest of San José, capital of Costa Rica, in order to determine...

BACKGROUND The eco-epidemiological status of Chagas disease in the Monte Desert ecoregion of western Argentina is largely unknown. We investigated the environmental and socio-demographic determinants of house infestation with Triatoma infestans, bug abundance, vector infection with Trypanosoma cruzi and host-feeding sources in a well-defined rural area of Lavalle Department in the Mendoza provi...

BACKGROUND Understanding the drivers of habitat selection by insect disease vectors is instrumental to the design and operation of rational control-surveillance systems. One pervasive yet often overlooked drawback of vector studies is that detection failures result in some sites being misclassified as uninfested; naïve infestation indices are therefore biased, and this can confound our view of ...

An epidemiological research project was performed in the State of Morelos including collection of samples for blood smears and culture, serological tests, and xenodiagnoses from a total of 76 domestic and peridomestic mammals. Two strains of Trypanosoma cruzi were isolated by haemocultures; one from a pig (Sus scrofa), the first case of natural infection reported in Mexico, and the other from a...

A search for Glossina fuscipes fuscipes puparia near homesteads in the sleeping sickness focus of Busoga revealed puparia and puparial shells under Coffea canephora (coffee), Musa sp. (banana) and Lantana camara thickets as well as under house verandahs and, once, inside a hut. This is the first description of G.f. fuscipes breeding sites in a peridomestic habitat. The implications of these fin...

Surveys of mosquitos in Sri Lanka have generally been confined to the South. A recent study in Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka reported on the biology of peridomestic mosquito species. The present survey indicates the predominant species to be Armigeres durhami (Edwaards) and Armigeres subalbatus (Coquillett). Aedes albopictus (Skuse), Ae. aegypti (Linnaeus) and Ae. novalbopictus Barraud...