A public good, produced independently of the funded programmes
The sourced map of mosquito vectors, disease burden, and the interventions reshaping them.
As gene drive, GM release and Wolbachia programmes engineer Aedes aegypti downward, the Atlas asks the question the intervention literature mostly does not: which competent vector fills the niche, and where. Every figure below traces to a named source with its caveats attached. Nothing here is invented.
217
countries mapped
7
principal vector species
281.7M
est. malaria cases / yr
609,930
est. malaria deaths / yr
6,136
literature works, 2021+
3,261
intervention-research records
The niche-displacement thesis
Engineered control is aimed at one vector. Its replacement is the fastest-growing story in the field.
The 17.1%/yr growth in Ae. albopictus invasion research outpaces every engineered-intervention theme, while intervention effort concentrates overwhelmingly on Ae. aegypti.
The matrix reads intervention research by technology and target vector. It is not a trial-site registry. Read across: Wolbachia, gene drive, GM release and SIT/IIT all point at Ae. aegypti. The vector best placed to move into a cleared niche, Ae. albopictus, draws a fraction of that attention. That gap is the editorial territory of the Atlas.
Intervention research, works by technology and target vectorpeak 161 works
| Ae. aegypti | Ae. albopictus | An. gambiae | Cx. quinquefasciatus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wolbachia | 161 | 50 | 7 | 16 |
| Gene drive | 85 | 35 | 46 | 14 |
| GM release | 128 | 42 | 33 | 13 |
| SIT / IIT | 144 | 70 | 20 | 20 |
Climate suitability, preview
Where the tiger mosquito is heading, and why a blank map is not a safe map.
A preliminary environmental-suitability model (WorldClim 2.1 + CMIP6, sourced below) for the three priority vectors, current and projected to 2070 under a high-emissions pathway. Read it as a reason for caution, not reassurance.
A low or blank value is not safety. It usually means an area is under-surveyed, not vector-free, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Where a competent vector is plausible, the honest guidance is to protect against bites: physical barriers such as long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) first, not repellent alone. This layer is a climatic envelope, it excludes land use, human density and vector-control effort, so it flags where conditions could support these vectors, never a calibrated risk score.
Aedes albopictus, largest projected suitability gain by 2070index 0-100
| Country | Now | 2070 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Congo, Rep. | 11 | 49 | +38 |
| Sweden | 39 | 77 | +38 |
| Congo, Dem. Rep. | 9 | 41 | +32 |
| Suriname | 17 | 47 | +30 |
| Denmark | 32 | 60 | +28 |
| Burkina Faso | 6 | 32 | +25 |
| Togo | 16 | 41 | +25 |
| Ghana | 24 | 46 | +22 |
| Nigeria | 16 | 38 | +22 |
| Gabon | 38 | 60 | +22 |
| Liberia | 21 | 42 | +21 |
| Benin | 9 | 30 | +21 |
Engineered-mosquito research concentrates in United States (1238), United Kingdom (524), China (407), France (352), Australia (284), Italy (181), Brazil (173), Germany (157). The niche-displacement question is whether that effort tracks where the Ae. albopictus niche is actually shifting. The full per-country overlay ships with the downloadable dataset.
Field size and growth, 12 themes, 2018 to 2025
Exact OpenAlex facet counts. Bars show total output; engineered interventions in dark, ecology in lime.
Ae. aegypti control
24,725 works
11.7%
Insecticide resistance
18,106 works
11.9%
Anopheles / malaria
17,646 works
8.7%
Climate & range shift
17,252 works
16.5%
West Nile virus
8,789 works
7.3%
Gene drive
8,512 works
11.6%
Arbovirus transmission
8,029 works
9.9%
GM mosquito release
7,045 works
10.9%
Wolbachia
4,911 works
12.4%
SIT / IIT
4,216 works
13.1%
Ae. albopictus invasion
1,782 works
17.1%
Vector competition/niche
301 works
5.3%
Malaria burden, top 10 countries
WHO modelled estimates, latest reporting year. Vector richness counts how many of the 7 principal vectors are recorded present.
global total 281,741,325 cases
| Country | Est. cases | Deaths | Incidence /1,000 | Vectors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nigeria | 68,466,353 | 184,933 | 294 | |
| Congo, Dem. Rep. | 35,175,261 | 67,676 | 322 | |
| Uganda | 13,215,579 | 16,204 | 264 | |
| Ethiopia | 12,436,942 | 22,360 | 138 | |
| Mozambique | 10,219,719 | 17,946 | 295 | |
| Angola | 9,808,643 | 16,385 | 259 | |
| Tanzania | 9,373,891 | 26,062 | 137 | |
| Cote d'Ivoire | 8,556,747 | 10,817 | 268 | |
| Mali | 8,474,969 | 14,239 | 346 | |
| Burkina Faso | 8,324,231 | 16,184 | 353 |
Where the research lives
Works by author-affiliation country. A well-documented funding-geography skew, and the reason an independent, non-funder-aligned bureau matters.
US2,118
United States
GB1,008
United Kingdom
CN594
China
FR565
France
BR480
Brazil
DE394
Germany
AU370
Australia
IT337
Italy
Reading the skew
The United States and United Kingdom alone account for more mosquito-control research than the entire endemic tropics combined. Programmes are funded, designed and evaluated far from where the vectors live. The Atlas exists to hold an independent line against that concentration.
Flagship works
Most-cited on-topic works anchoring the engineered-intervention evidence base. Browse the full literature explorer or download the corpus of 6,136 works.
633 citationsNew England Journal of Medicine2021
320 citationsJournal of Travel Medicine2021
241 citationsPLoS neglected tropical diseases2021
237 citationsClinical Medicine2022
232 citationsThe Lancet Infectious Diseases2021
Provenance and honesty
Every source, every caveat, in the open.
The Atlas publishes what it can defend and flags what it cannot. These caveats travel with the data, into every export and every citation.
Mosticare-derived risk classificationderived
CC BY 4.0 (Mosticare Ühing)
risk_class combines competent-vector presence with the |lat|<=45 climatic envelope. This is a coarse FIRST FILTER for transmission plausibility, NOT a mechanistic environmental-suitability model. Do not read it as calibrated risk. The mechanistic model lives under source 'worldclim-sdm' and is labelled preliminary.
Mosticare intervention-research overlay (literature-derived)derived
CC BY 4.0 (Mosticare Ühing)
Derived from the OpenAlex corpus: works tagged with an engineered-intervention theme, technology read from the theme, target vector inferred from the title, geography from author-affiliation countries. This maps where intervention RESEARCH concentrates by technology x vector x country. It is NOT a verified field-trial-site registry and carries no release coordinates.
GBIF occurrence facets (7 principal vector species)
CC BY 4.0 (per-dataset; cite via GBIF download DOI)
Presence-only and effort-biased: counts reflect where people sample, not mosquito abundance. A blank or 0 count means 'no GBIF record', NOT confirmed absence. Country-level presence is the reliable layer; the point sample is capped per species and under-represents under-surveyed regions.
Natural Earth 1:50m admin-0
Public domain
Country polygons + centroid latitudes used for the |lat|<=45 climatic band filter.
OpenAlex, mosquito vector biology & control corpus (12 themes)
CC0 1.0
6,137 deduplicated works, relevance-ranked top ~800 per theme, 2021+. Themes overlap (a work can count in several). Trend counts are exact facets.
WHO Global Health Observatory, World Malaria Report indicators
WHO GHO terms of use (attribution required)
Modelled estimates, latest available year per country (mostly 2023-24); not directly comparable to raw notification counts. WHO GHO carries no global dengue case dataset, a real surveillance gap; Aedes-borne risk is proxied by competent-vector presence, not reported cases.
World Bank Open Data, population (SP.POP.TOTL) + income/region class.
CC BY 4.0
Latest available total population; income group and region are World Bank classifications.
Environmental suitability, WorldClim 2.1 + CMIP6 MPI-ESM1-2-HR random-forest SDMpreview
WorldClim 2.1 CC BY 4.0; CMIP6 MPI-ESM1-2-HR per-model terms (download sign-off pending)
PRELIMINARY MODELLED LAYER, read it as a reason for caution, not reassurance. A random-forest species-distribution model over WorldClim 2.1 bioclimatic variables, with CMIP6 MPI-ESM1-2-HR (SSP5-8.5) for the 2070 projection, target-group plus random background, cold-limit masked. Climatic suitability ONLY: it excludes land use, human density, and vector-control effort, so it is a transmission-plausibility ENVELOPE, not calibrated risk and not an established range. Crucially, a LOW or BLANK value is NOT a safety signal: it often means an area is under-surveyed, not vector-free, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Where a competent vector is plausible, Mosticare's guidance is to protect against bites, physical barriers such as long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) first, not repellent alone. Modelled for 3 priority vectors: Aedes albopictus, Aedes aegypti, Anopheles stephensi.