Modeling the average population of La Crosse vectors in Knox County, Tennessee

• Main Authors: Maitraya Ghatak, Javier Urcuyo, Patrick Wise, Rebecca Trout Fryxell, Suzanne Lenhart
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Intercollegiate Biomathematics Alliance 2019-01-01
• Series: Letters in Biomathematics
• Subjects: la crosse virus; ordinary differential equation model; east tennessee
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23737867.2019.1655497

La Crosse Virus (LACV) is an arbovirus found in Eastern Appalachia and can cause pediatric encephalitis in prepubescent children. To assess the risk and transmission of this disease, it is particularly important to understand the average population of Aedes mosquitoes, which are the vectors of this virus. We use a deterministic compartmental model to study the effects of environmental factors on the population dynamics of Aedes mosquitoes in the Knox County area. We use locally-collected mosquito population data to adjust our model outputs and find that model transitions are heavily dependent on the fluctuations of both temperature and accumulated precipitation. These findings should be considered for mosquito management in Southern Appalachia, as well as in other regions with slight modifications to our model.