Effects of mosquito control using the microbial agent Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems: a systematic review

Table 1 Outcome categories and example response variables^a)

Outcome category	Example response variables
Abundance	Number of individuals, density
Diversity	Species richness, evenness, diversity indices
Community composition	Bray–Curtis distance, species turnover
Species traits/Feeding groups	Body size, growth, longevity
Life history	Clutch size, reproduction success, emergence success, number of generations per year
Food web structure/biomarkers	Changed food sources, isotopes
Changed ecosystem processes	Leaf decomposition, plant productivity
Environmental data	Nutrient concentrations, pH, suspended solids, dissolved oxygen
Persistence/fate^b)	Number of spores, toxicity of crystals

^a) The outcome categories used in this review and how to allocate the response variables among these are to some extent arbitrary, but the review team members agreed that this categorization was a pragmatic way to structure the data and help the readers to get an overview of the results
^b) Not including cases where short-term persistence was quantified as toxicity against target species, for example using the response variable mortality of mosquito larvae or abundance of mosquitoes

ISSN: 2047-2382