Geospatial analysis of Aedes poicilius, vector of Bancroftian Filariasis in the Philippines.

Bancroftian filariasis, one of the Philippines' neglected tropical diseases, is a parasitic disease caused by Wuchereria bancrofti and transmitted by Aedes poicilius, which thrive in the Musa plantations abundant in certain Philippine regions. Eliminating this disease is far from being achieved, thus emphasizing the need for a better control or elimination program by constructing a contemporary predictive model of the mosquito, A. poicilius, and identifying key environmental variables that favor the mosquito species. Modeling of the distribution of lymphatic filariasis was divided into two phases: data collection of disease occurrences and environmental variables from 1985 to 2019 and model calibration and testing utilizing the MaxEnt algorithm. Model sensitivity was validated through the area under the curve (AUC) method. The model had a mean training AUC of 0.995 ± 0.001. The Jackknife test was performed to determine the effect of the assessed variables on the prevalence of the disease and revealed that isothermality has the highest gain when used in isolation. The total frequency of lymphatic filariasis was mapped using the QGIS software to exhibit the suitability of agricultural plantations as breeding grounds for A. poicilius populations.