Functional response of species to multiscale landscape structure in a vector-borne disease

International audienceThe functional response of species to landscape is a recurring issue in landscape ecology. The scale levels favourable to the parasite responsible for a vector-borne disease, alveolar echinococcosis, have been explored in the Doubs department in eastern France. The method consists in maximizing landscape composition's heterogeneity in the environment of infected and non-infected georeferenced samples at various scales. The aim is to identify scale levels at which the positive samples' landscapes are the most specific and differ the most from the landscape in the environment of all samples. Three scales were identified and the distance to the positive samples' composition vectors were computed at each scale. The resulting maps give an insight on areas expected to be prone to host the parasite's life cycle. The landscape composition vectors were also compared between the two sets of data and helped drawing conclusions on landscape elements presumed favourable to the parasite. Subsequent sampling in areas highlighted by this work would help validate the conclusions and confirm the critical scales identified