A comparison of parametric methods of modeling mosquito survival using temperature and age-dependent mosquito survival data

Abstract

It is estimated that malaria affects over 200 million people every year, and accounts for about 750,000 deaths during the same period. The disease control measures often include interventions aimed at reducing the survival of the adult female Anopheles mosquitoes. Whereas research effort has been paid to evaluate the effects on the vector survival, little research has been done on how temperature and time affect the vector adult life-history parameters. This paper sought to compare the performance of four parametric models, namely; Gompertz, gamma, Weibull, and exponential models to determine the best model for analyzing the survival of the female Anopheles mosquito. Using data from a mosquito survival experiment, the paper compared the performance of the models in fitting mosquito mortality. The results showed that temperature and age are significant predictors of vector mortality. In addition, the Gompertz model fitted the data on the adult A. gambiae and A. stephensi better than the Weibull, Gamma, and the Exponential models. The findings of the current paper are useful in parameterizing reliable mathematical models that examine the potential impact of temperature as well as global warming on the transmission of malaria.