Modeling West Nile virus Ecology

The main objectives of the work-package "Modeling West Nile virus Ecology” are to evaluate the effect of temperature on West Nile virus (WNV) transmission potential and the emergence of new foci, to identify the primary reservoir host species and their relative competence to WNV transmission, to assess the impact of host heterogeneity on WNV amplification for various lineages and genotypes, to evaluate the interactions of WNV with other mosquito-infecting viruses, and to integrate these data into a mathematical model to determine how hosts, vectors and pathogens might interact dynamically. Here I present the results concerning the effect of some environmental variables on mosquito population dynamics. The mosquitoes dataset include longitudinal sampling of Culex pipiens adult females collected from 2000 to 2011 in Piedmont region, North-western Italy. We found that the onset of mosquito activity and total mosquito abundance are well explained by some early predictors that concern only climatic and environmental conditions that take place during the spring season. Specifically, the onset is well predicted by weekly cumulated temperature till half of May while total abundance is well predicted by the speed of temperature increase in spring and by total precipitation during spring. In addition, total mosquito abundance is also influenced by the distance of the mosquito trap to urban sites.