insects Article Diversity, Co-Occurrence, and Nestedness Patterns of Sand Fly Species (Diptera: Psychodidae) in Two Rural Areas of Western Panamá Chystrie A. Rigg 1,* , Milixa Perea 1, Kadir González 1 , Azael Saldaña 1,2, José E. Calzada 1, Yan Gao 3 , Nicole L. Gottdenker 4 and Luis Fernando Chaves 5,* 1 Departamento de Investigación en Parasitología, Instituto Conmemorativo Gorgas de Estudios de la Salud (ICGES), Ciudad de Panamá 0816-02593, Panama;
[email protected] (M.P.);
[email protected] (K.G.);
[email protected] (A.S.);
[email protected] (J.E.C.) 2 Centro de Investigación y Diagnóstico de Enfermedades Parasitarias (CIDEP), Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Panamá, Ciudad de Panamá 4 3366, Panama 3 Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental (CIGA), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Morelia 58190, Michoacán, Mexico;
[email protected] 4 Department of Pathology, School of Veterinary Medicine and Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases (CEID), University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA;
[email protected] 5 Instituto Costarricense de Investigación y Enseñanza en Nutrición y Salud (INCIENSA), Tres Ríos, Cartago 4-2250, Costa Rica * Correspondence:
[email protected] (C.A.R.);
[email protected] (L.F.C.) Simple Summary: Sand flies are insects that can transmit the parasites causing leishmaniasis, a major neglected tropical disease. In the Americas, these insects are highly diverse, and unlike what is observed for other vector-borne diseases, many species co-occur in sites where this disease affects human populations. Here, we present results from a two-year-long study where we study how the Citation: Rigg, C.A.; Perea, M.; number of species changes in two rural areas of Western Panamá with different land use cover and González, K.; Saldaña, A.; Calzada, through the dry and wet seasons.