Vector bionomics and vectorial capacity as emergent properties of mosquito behaviors and ecology

摘要

Mathematical modelling of pathogen transmission by mosquitoes began over a century ago with Ronald Ross and has produced a set of metrics that are the basis of measuring transmission. One crucial metric is vectorial capacity (VC), a simple equation describing the potential of mosquitoes to transmit pathogens. Despite its elegance, this formula lacks specificity to describe mosquitoes in a particular landscape. To study how these metrics arise in particular places, we built MBITES (Mosquito Bout-based and Individual-based Transmission Ecology Simulator), a complex stochastic individual-based model where mosquitoes fly from place to place to blood feed, sugar feed, lay eggs, mate, or rest. We also built a related model, MBDETES based on deterministic mathematics to show how the complex behaviors possible in MBITES can be summarized on average, and to provide a bridge to the simple equations describing VC. Through a series of computational experiments, we show a strong dependence VC and other metrics on fine details of the landscape mosquitoes inhabit which are not obvious from simple equations.