Chaves, Luis

Lic. in Biology(Minor in Parasitology and Medical Entomology) Universidad de Los Andes (Venezuela) 2001
M.Sc. in Ecology Universidad Central de Venezuela 2003
Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Michigan 2008

I have been studying insect vectors and the diseases they transmit since I was an undergraduate in Venezuela. Before coming to Indiana, I was an associate researcher, and external consultant, at Instituto Conmemorativo Gorgas de Estudios de la Salud (Gorgas Memorial Research Institute) in Panamá (2017-2022); an external faculty of the Entomology Masters at Universidad de Panamá (2020-2022); a senior researcher at INCIENSA (Costa Rican Institute for Research and Training on Health and Nutrition) in Costa Rica (2018-2019); an assistant professor at the Nagasaki University Institute of Tropical Medicine (2013-2016) in Japan. I had postdoctoral training on the mathematical modeling of coupled natural and social systems at Hokkaido University as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellow (2010-2012) and in Vector Ecology and Environmental Studies at Emory University (2008-2010) where I was a member of the NIH-RAPIDD (Research and Policy on Infectious Disease Dynamics) group on vector-borne diseases. I have directed research projects in Costa Rica, Panamá, USA, Venezuela and Japan. I have collaborated in projects based in Canada, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, Vanuatu and Kenya, among other places. In this process I have mentored a diverse group of students at different stages in their training. Research results have been published in over 150 papers mainly focused on insect vectors, vector-borne diseases and other diseases sensitive to environmental change, and I am currently co-editing a book about the ecology and modelling of Vector-Borne diseases to be published in 2026. At IU I also have an adjunct appointment in the Department of Geography, and I am affiliated with the Ostrom Workshop program on Food Systems, and the Tobias Center from the Hamilton Lugar School.  Since coming to Indiana University I was selected as a member of the inaugural cohort of the NIH Climate and Health Scholars Program (2023), became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2023) and was selected a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society (2024). 

Scholarly Interest

The Chaves lab studies the impacts of environmental change on the ecology of insect vectors and the diseases they transmit. The approach combines both field work and modeling to answer questions about the impact of both rising temperatures and changing environments on vectors and their associated diseases. We also study the coupling of natural and social phenomena in pathogen transmission, primarily looking at political, economic and geographic factors that affect the emergence and transmission of pathogens. In general, our research aims to generate results that can inform policy and decision making aimed at reducing the burden of vector-borne and neglected tropical diseases.

Teaching Interest

I teach Introduction to Public Health Biology (SPH V-235), a mandatory general education science class for all undergraduates in the School of Public Health. I also have developed a class about the Geography of Human Diseases (SPH V-257), a class dealing with the importance of place and location for human health and wellbeing and I have developed a couple of R-based graduate classes about  Geographical Information Science and one about Geographical Data Science. I also have proposed a graduate seminar about the impacts of Climate Change on Health.

Wallace R, Chaves LF, Bergmann L, Ayres Lopes CfJ, Hogerwerf L, Kock R, Wallace RG: Clear-Cutting Disease Control: Capital-Led Deforestation, Public Health Austerity, and Vector-Borne Infection. New York: Springer; 2018.

Chaves LF, Calzada JE, Valderrama A, Saldaña A. Cutaneous leishmaniasis and sand fly fluctuations are associated with El Niño in Panamá. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2014 Oct 2;8(10):e3210. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0003210.

Chaves LF, Chuang TW, Sasa M, Gutiérrez JM. Snakebites are associated with poverty, weather fluctuations, and El Niño. Sci Adv. 2015 Sep 11;1(8):e1500249. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1500249.

Yamada K, Valderrama A, Gottdenker N, Cerezo L, Minakawa N, Saldaña A, Calzada JE, Chaves LF. Macroecological patterns of American Cutaneous Leishmaniasis transmission across the health areas of Panamí(1980-2012). Parasite Epidemiol Control. 2016 Mar 18;1(2):42-55. doi:10.1016/j.parepi.2016.03.003.

Hurtado LA, Calzada JE, Rigg CA, Castillo M, Chaves LF. Climatic fluctuations and malaria transmission dynamics, prior to elimination, in Guna Yala, República de Panamá. Malar J. 2018 Feb 20;17(1):85. doi:10.1186/s12936-018-2235-3.

Romero LM, Chaverri LG, Chaves LF. Mosquito (Diptera: Culicidae) Species Composition in Ovitraps From a Mesoamerican Tropical Montane Cloud Forest. J Med Entomol. 2019 Feb 25;56(2):491-500. doi: 10.1093/jme/tjy170

Marín Rodríguez R, Chaves LF. Parasite Removal for Malaria Elimination in Costa Rica. Trends Parasitol. 2019 Aug;35(8):585-588. doi:10.1016/j.pt.2019.04.007.

Chaves LF, Friberg MD, Moji K. Synchrony of globally invasive Aedes spp. immature mosquitoes along an urban altitudinal gradient in their native range. Sci Total Environ. 2020 Sep 10;734:139365. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139365

Chaves LF, Ramírez Rojas M, Prado M, Garcés JL, Salas Peraza D, Marín Rodríguez R. Health policy impacts on malaria transmission in Costa Rica. Parasitology. 2020 Aug;147(9):999-1007. doi: 10.1017/S0031182020000621.

Chaves LF, Valerín Cordero JA, Delgado G, Aguilar-Avendaño C, Maynes E, Gutiérrez Alvarado JM, Ramírez Rojas M, Romero LM, Mariacute;n Rodríguez R. Modeling the association between Aedes aegypti ovitrap egg counts, multi-scale remotely sensed environmental data and arboviral cases at Puntarenas, Costa Rica (2017-2018). Curr Res Parasitol Vector Borne Dis. 2021 Feb 9;1:100014. doi:10.1016/j.crpvbd.2021.100014.

Chaves LF, Friberg MD, Hurtado LA, Marín Rodríguez R, O'Sullivan D, Bergmann LR. Trade, uneven development and people in motion: Used territories and the initial spread of COVID-19 in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. Socioecon Plann Sci. 2022 Mar;80:101161. doi: 10.1016/j.seps.2021.101161. 

Chaves LF, Meyers AC, Hodo CL, Sanders JP, Curtis-Robles R, Hamer GL, Hamer SA: Trypanosoma cruzi infection in dogs along the US-Mexico border: R0 changes with vector species composition. Epidemics 2023, 45:100723.

Perfecto I, Chaves LF, Fitch GM, Hajian-Forooshani Z, Iuliano B, Li K, Medina N, Morris J, Jiménez BO, Rivera-Salinas IS et al: Looking beyond land-use and land-cover change: Zoonoses emerge in the agricultural matrix. One Earth 2023, 6(9):1131-1142.

Rhodes CG, Chaves LF, Bergmann LR, Hamer GL: Ensemble species distribution modeling of Culex tarsalis (Diptera: Culicidae) in the continental United States. Journal of Medical Entomology 2023, 60(4):664-679.

Gottdenker NL, Chaves LF: Dispossession, displacement, and disease: The global land squeeze and infectious disease emergence. One Earth 2024, 7(7):1137-1141.

Chaves LF, Friberg MD, Pascual M, Calzada JE, Luckhart S, Bergmann LR: Community-serving research addressing climate change impacts on vector-borne diseases. The Lancet Planetary Health 2024, 8(5):e334-e341.

O’Dell N, Bolling BG, Dacko N, Carr JT, Hambrick B, Chaves LF, McMillan JR: Identifying environmental drivers of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus abundance in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex using Random Forest modeling. Journal of Medical Entomology 2025, 62(4):789-799. doi:10.1093/jme/tjaf036

McMillan JR, Sun J, Chaves LF, Armstrong PM: Using mosquito and arbovirus data to computationally predict West Nile virus in unsampled areas of the Northeast United States. PNAS Nexus 2025, 4(8): pgaf227, doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf227

Cecilio P, Rogerio LA, D. Serafim T, Tang K, Willen L, Iniguez E, Meneses C, Chaves LF, Zhang Y, dos Santos Felix L et al: Leishmania sand fly-transmission is disrupted by Delftia tsuruhatensis TC1 bacteria. Nature Communications 2025, 16(1):3571 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58769-4 

Simons AP, Lenfestey A, Chaves LF: Density-dependence and different dimensions of changing weather shape adult abundance patterns of common mosquito species (Diptera: Culicidae) in Bloomington, Indiana, USA. Current Research in Parasitology & Vector-Borne Diseases 2025, 7:100242.                                                             doi: 10.1016/j.crpvbd.2025.100242