Land and climate suitability for West Nile virus in Atlantic archipelagos guided by historical data from Europe.

West Nile (WNV) is a zoonotic mosquito-borne virus with an expanding geographical and epidemic activity worldwide. Computational studies have contributed to the understanding of factors driving WNV occurrence, particularly in North America and Europe. Archipelagos have largely been overlooked, despite the risk to unique local avian species and human populations. In this study, we apply an ecological niche approach, trained on WNV occurrence and (a)biotic factors from European countries to project ecological suitability for WNV occurrence across several Atlantic archipelagos. The approach gives weight to the temporal dimension, generating novel insights on seasonality both for Europe and the archipelagos. For European countries, modelling results align with previous findings on spatial hotspots and (a)biotic drivers of WNV occurrence, while further unravelling properties of at-risk human populations within dynamically suitable land areas. For Atlantic archipelagos, results constitute a novel and detailed perspective on local ecological suitability for WNV occurrence, providing a data-driven framework that identifies spatial hotspots, defines seasonal patterns and quantifies the local population at risk. The synthetic data generated in this study supports the development of targeted preparedness, surveillance and mitigation plans tailored to the unique ecological and seasonal dynamics of each region under study.