In spite of numerous, recent advances in vector-mosquito and parasite genomics, the public health burden of malaria is currently undergoing a dramatic global resurgence. Accurate predictive distributional models for malaria are needed to help target control efforts. Unfortunately, a critical gap of knowledge has emerged between the ecology of vector mosquitoes and the spatial and temporal patterns of the Plasmodium pathogens that cause malaria. Because of this gap, the formation of accurate distributional models of malaria over particular regions is limited to impossible.

Our long-term goal is to determine the limits of the ecological niche of Plasmodium parasites in order to predict their temporal and geographical occurrence. The objective of this study, which is the next step towards our long-term goal, is to predict the geographical occurrence of Plasmodium parasites in northeastern Borneo. It is our central hypothesis that large-scale environmental parameters limit the geographical occurrence of vector mosquitoes and Plasmodium pathogens over large-scale landscapes, and thus incidences of malaria.

To test our hypothesis an ecological niche model was developed based on the localities of Plasmodium-infected mosquito pools and remotely sensed data indices. Resulting models were then projected onto geography of northeastern Borneo to give a composite predictive distribution. Model accuracy was tested in two ways, including data re-sampling and direct comparison to geographical outbreaks of malaria within the region. Areas of high risk for the occurrence of Plasmodium parasites are also identified.