An almost periodic Ross–Macdonald model with time delay in a patchy environment

Abstract

An almost periodic multi-patch Ross–Macdonald model with the incubation of virus in hosts and in vectors is investigated in this paper. The existence of the almost periodic disease-free solution and the definition of basic reproduction ratio R0 are given. It is shown that the disease will die out when there exists a small invasion and the same dispersal rate in patches if R0<1, while the disease is uniformly persistent if R0>1. At last, numerical simulations illustrate the above results. In addition, a comparison between the almost periodic and periodic models shows that the periodic model may underestimate or overestimate the basic reproduction ratio.