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Background  The Barotse floodplains of the upper Zambezi River and its tributaries are a highly dynamic environment, with seasonal flooding and transhumance presenting a shifting mosaic of potential larval habitat and human and livestock blood meals for malaria vector mosquitoes. However, limited entomological surveillance has been undertaken to characterize the vector community in these floodplains and their environs. Such information is necessary as, despite substantial deployment of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS) against  Anopheles  vectors, malaria transmission persists across Barotseland in Zambia’s Western Province.    Methods  Geographically extensive larval surveys were undertaken in two health districts along 102 km of transects, at fine spatial resolution, during a dry season and following the peak of the successive wet season. Larvae were sampled within typical  Anopheles  flight range of human settlements and identified through genetic sequencing of cytochrome  c  oxidase I and internal transcribed spacer two regions of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. This facilitated detailed comparison of taxon-specific abundance patterns between ecological zones differentiated by hydrological controls.    Results  An unexpected paucity of primary vectors was revealed, with  An. gambiae  s.l. and  An. funestus  representing < 2% of 995 sequenced anophelines. Potential secondary vectors predominated in the vector community, primarily  An. coustani  group species and  An. squamosus.  While the distribution of  An. gambiae  s.l. in the study area was highly clustered, secondary vector species were ubiquitous across the landscape in both dry and wet seasons, with some taxon-specific relationships between abundance and ecological zones by season.    Conclusions  The diversity of candidate vector species and their high relative abundance observed across diverse hydro-ecosystems indicate a highly adaptable transmission system, resilient to environmental variation and, potentially, interventions that target only part of the vector community. Larval survey results imply that residual transmission of malaria in Barotseland is being mediated predominantly by secondary vector species, whose known tendencies for crepuscular and outdoor biting renders them largely insensitive to prevalent vector control methods.

parasites and vectors

Geographically extensive larval surveys reveal an unexpected scarcity of primary vector mosquitoes in a region of persistent malaria transmission in western Zambia