Modeling the suppression dynamics of Aedes mosquitoes with mating inhomogeneity

Abstract

A novel strategy for controlling mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue, malaria and Zika, involves releases of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes as Wolbachia cause early embryo death when an infected male mates with an uninfected female. In this work, we introduce a delay differential equation model with mating inhomogeneity to discuss mosquito population suppression based on Wolbachia. Our analyses show that the wild mosquitoes could be eliminated if either the adult mortality rate exceeds the threshold $\delta ^*_A $ or the release amount exceeds the threshold $r^* $ uniformly. We also present the nonlinear dependence of $\delta ^*_A $ and $r^* $ on the parameters, respectively, as well as the effect of pesticide spraying on wild mosquitoes. Our simulations suggest that the releasing should be started at least 5 weeks before the peak dengue season, taking into account both the release amount and the suppression speed.

Keywords

• dengue fever
• wolbachia
• cytoplasmic incompatibility
• mosquito population suppression
• delay differential equation model