Chromatic and Morphological Differentiation of (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) with Land Use Diversity in El Salvador.

Chagas disease is caused by the parasite , which is transmitted by insect-vectors in the taxonomic subfamily Triatominae and affects approximately 8,000,000 people world-wide. Current mitigation strategies for Chagas focus on insecticides, infrastructure improvements, and management of symptoms, which are largely unsustainable in underserved communities where the disease is widespread. Transmission patterns of vector-borne diseases are known to adaptively respond to habitat change; as such, the objective of our study was to evaluate how the physical characteristics of would vary in relation to land use in El Salvador. We hypothesized that the color and morphology of would change with municipal levels of urban and natural green space, natural green space, and agricultural space, as well as municipal diversity, richness, and evenness of land use types. Our results characterize how color and morphology vary directly with anthropogenic changes to natural and agricultural environments, which are reflective of a highly adaptable population primed to respond to environmental change. Mitigation studies of Chagas disease should exploit the relationships between anthropogenic land use and morphology to evaluate how the transmission pattern of and Chagas disease symptomology are impacted.