Man bites mosquito: understanding the contribution of human movement to vector-borne disease dynamics.

ABSTRACT: In metropolitan areas people travel frequently and extensively but often in highly structured commuting patterns. We investigate the role of this type of human movement in the epidemiology of vector-borne pathogens such as dengue. Analysis is based on a metapopulation model where mobile humans connect static mosquito subpopulations. We find that, due to frequency dependent biting, infection incidence in the human and mosquito populations is almost independent of the duration of contact. If the mosquito population is not uniformly distributed between patches the transmission potential of the pathogen at the metapopulation level, as summarized by the basic reproductive number, is determined by the size of the largest subpopulation and reduced by stronger connectivity. Global extinction of th

SUBMITTER: Adams B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2727792 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature