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Background  Triatomine bugs are responsible for the vectorial transmission of the parasite  Trypanosoma cruzi , the etiological agent of Chagas disease, a zoonosis affecting 10 million people and with 25 million at risk of infection. Triatomines are associated with particular habitats that offer shelter and food. Several triatomine species of the genus  Rhodnius  have a close association with palm crowns, where bugs can obtain microclimatic stability and blood from the associated fauna. The  Rhodnius -palm interaction has been reported in several places of Central and South America. However, the association in the distributions of  Rhodnius  species and palms has not been explicitly determined.    Methods  Niches of  Rhodnius  and palm species with reports of  Rhodnius  spp. infestation were estimated by minimum volume ellipsoids and compared in the environmental and the geographical space to identify niche similarity.  Rhodnius  spp. niche models were run with the palm distributions as environmental variables to determine if palm presence could be considered a predictor of  Rhodnius  spp. distributions, improving model performance.    Results  Niche similarity was found between all the studied  Rhodnius  and palm species showing variation in niche overlap among the involved species. Most of the areas with suitable conditions for  Rhodnius  species were also suitable to palm species, being favorable for more than one palm species in the majority of locations. Performance was similar in  Rhodnius  niche models with and without palm distributions. However, when palm distributions were included, their contribution to the model was high, being the most important variable in some  Rhodnius  spp.    Conclusions  To our knowledge, this is the first time that the distributions of  Rhodnius  and palm species were compared on a large scale and their spatial association explicitly studied. We found spatial association between  Rhodnius  and palm species can be explained because both organisms shared environmental requirements, and most of the areas with suitable conditions for  Rhodnius  species were also suitable to several palm species.  Rhodnius  presence would not be restricted to palm presence but the zones with palm presence could be more suitable for  Rhodnius  spp. presence.

Co-occurrence or dependence? Using spatial analyses to explore the interaction between palms and Rhodnius triatomines