Current and future distributions of main dermatitis-causing insects and risks of dermatitis across China

Insect-related dermatitis (IRD) has emerged as a significant public health concern. However, its risk distribution and epidemic dynamics remain poorly understood. Here, we project the current and future risk distributions of dermatitis-causing insects (DCIs) across China. The maximum entropy modeling was adopted to project the suitability distribution of eight main DCIs. Our findings reveal a significant concentration of risk distributions for both DCIs and IRD southeast of the Heihe-Tengchong Line in China. Furthermore, our projections indicate that most DCIs are expected to experience an increase in their suitability distribution under future climate change. These shifts are closely related to future changes of temperature and precipitation. Further field validation of key DCIs confirmed that the observed suitable regions would expand northward with growing temperature and precipitation. Collectively, the above results revealed the risk distribution of DCIs and IRD in China, providing valuable references for disease management and prevention of IRD. Dermatitis-causing insects are concentrated southeast of the Heihe-Tengchong Line in China, and their distribution is projected to expand northward with increasing temperature and precipitation, according to an analysis that uses environmental, socio-economic data and Maxent modeling.