Danyang Wang, Anouschka R. Hof, Kevin D. Matson, Frank van Langevelde, CLIMOS data providers, Vít Dvořák, Ognyan Mikov, Ivelina Katerinova, Simona Tchakarova, Μαρία Αντωνίου, Jorian Prudhomme, Denis Séréno, Baptiste Vergnes, Nil Rahola, Anne‐Laure Bañuls, Maribel Jiménez, Ricardo Molina, Estela González, Carla Maia, Özge Erişöz Kasap, Bülent Alten, Oscar D. Kirstein, Shirli Elbaz, Gioia Bongiorno, Luigi Gradoni, Kirami Ölgen, E. Berriatua, Clara Muñoz, José Risueño Iranzo, Pedro Pérez‐Cutillas, Gabriella Gaglio, Emanuele Brianti, Vladimir Ivović, Katja Adam, Sergio Natal, Edwin Kniha
Climate and land-use changes influence the transmission of vector-borne diseases by affecting the distribution and survival of disease vectors. Numerous diseases are transmitted by phlebotomine sand flies (Diptera: Psychodidae: Phlebotominae), including leishmaniasis. Several major sand fly-borne diseases are responsible for high global disease burdens and high socio-economic costs. In Europe, over 20 known sand fly vector species are largely confined to the Mediterranean Basin, yet records of sand fly presence further north increase. Global warming is predicted to drive the spread of sand flies to large areas of Europe in the 21th century, an effect likely to be exacerbated by anthropogenic factors. However, the constraints to the geographic distributions of sand flies are not well understood. This study aims to increase the understanding of the drivers of the geographic distributions of sand flies, using species distribution modelling to systematically test links between sand fly occurrences and climatic, land-use, lithological, biodiversity and human population variables in Europe and adjacent Mediterranean regions. We found that moisture is the most important environmental variable both in explaining and in predicting sand fly occurrences. The projected suitable habitats are larger than the current known sand fly distributions, and these habitats are expected to expand due to changes in climate and land-use. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-025-04009-z.