Modeling the effects of Aedes aegypti‘s larval environment on population and disease spread

Mosquitoes vector harmful pathogens that infect millions of people every year, and developing approaches to effectively control mosquitoes is a topic of great interest. However, the success of many control measures is highly dependent upon ecological, physiological, and life history traits of mosquito species. The behavior of mosquitoes and their potential to vector pathogens can also be impacted by these traits. One trait of interest is mosquito body mass, which depends upon many factors associated with the environment in which juvenile mosquitoes develop. First, I will discuss a model we developed that consist of partial differential equation of juvenile and adult mosquitoes across time, age and mass. We incorporate resource dependence in the juvenile growth and death functions to determine differential effects of these on mosquito population dynamics. Then I will present a discrete time compartment model that is fit to data from collaborators. The model is built on changes in the larval stage and how that changes the mosquito’s life cycle. This is coupled with a disease model of Zika. We find vectorial capacity and consider how the change in mass impacts the total spread of Zika in our model.