Climatic and environmental early predictors of mosquito population dynamics in North-western Italy

The aim of this work was to find out environmental early predictors for mosquito population dynamics. The mosquito dataset consists of a longitudinal sampling of Culex pipiens adult females collected from 2000 to 2011 in Piedmont region, North-western Italy. A series of statistical models were implemented to catch the best environmental predictors for mosquito population dynamics. For each years and mosquito trap, starting from weekly data, annual indexes that summarize mosquito seasonal population dynamics were derived; precisely, the yearly total mosquito abundance, defined as the sum of all weekly captures within the year and the date of significant onset for mosquito activity (defined as the date when cumulative mosquito abundance exceeds 10% of total abundance). It has been found that both the onset of mosquito activity and total mosquito abundance are well explained by early predictors that consider only climatic and environmental conditions during the spring season. Precisely, the onset of mosquito activity is well predicted by growing degree temperature cumulated in the first 19 weeks of the year (around half of May) while total mosquito abundance is well predicted by spring warming (speed of temperature increase in spring) and by total precipitation during spring.