Abstract
BackgroundThe impact of weather and climate on malaria transmission has attracted considerable attention in recent years, yet uncertainties around future disease trends under climate change remain. Mathematical models provide powerful tools for addressing such questions and understanding the implications for interventions and eradication strategies, but these require realistic modeling of the vector population dynamics and its response to environmental variables.MethodsPublished and unpublished field and experimental data are used to develop new formulations for modeling the relationships between key aspects of vector ecology and environmental variables. These relationships are integrated within a validated deterministic model of Anopheles gambiae s.s. population dynamics to provide a valuable tool for understanding vector response to biotic and abiotic variables.ResultsA novel, parsimonious framework for assessing the effects of rainfall, cloudiness, wind speed, desiccation, temperature, relative humidity and density-dependence on vector abundance is developed, allowing ease of construction, analysis, and integration into malaria transmission models. Model validation shows good agreement with longitudinal vector abundance data from Tanzania, suggesting that recent malaria reductions in certain areas of Africa could be due to changing environmental conditions affecting vector populations.ConclusionsMathematical models provide a powerful, explanatory means of understanding the role of environmental variables on mosquito populations and hence for predicting future malaria transmission under global change. The framework developed provides a valuable advance in this respect, but also highlights key research gaps that need to be resolved if we are to better understand future malaria risk in vulnerable communities.
Highlights
The impact of weather and climate on malaria transmission has attracted considerable attention in recent years, yet uncertainties around future disease trends under climate change remain
The results suggest that the observed decline in vector numbers reported in [13] could, in turn, be due to long-term changes in environmental conditions
Along with An. arabiensis and Anopheles funestus, An. gambiae s.s. is one of the principal malaria vectors in Africa [19] and understanding its ecology and dynamics is vital in better understanding the associated impact on malaria transmission and the prospects for eradication [55], as well as the effectiveness of vector controls in different communities and settings
Summary
The impact of weather and climate on malaria transmission has attracted considerable attention in recent years, yet uncertainties around future disease trends under climate change remain. Mechanistic models, on the other hand, adopt a process-based approach, incorporating known biological, epidemiological and entomological relationships affecting vector and pathogen vital rates and formulating mathematically how these combine [7,8,9]. Both types of model have important roles to play in improving our understanding of climate-driven transmission changes, but the focus here is on exploiting the explanatory power of the latter
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