Dynamics of Disease Transmitting vectors

Strategies for controlling disease vectors, and consequently the diseases they transmit, have been discovered and implemented. However, sector-borne diseases still form one of the major causes of mortality in the world today. To better understand the dynamics and transmission of vector-borne diseases, it is important to study and understand the dynamics of the population of vectors that carry these diseases. In this book, we derive and study a deterministic differential equation spatially explicit model for the population dynamics of disease vectors of humans. We partition the entire vector population into three classes representing physiological status. These are: the class of unfed vectors resting at breeding sites, the class of unfed vectors questing for blood at human habitats, and the class of fed and reproducing vectors returning to breeding sites. We further subdivide these classes into subclasses representing spatial locations of points in space called vector breeding sites and human habitats. The entire human population is also partitioned into classes representing only spatial location in human habitats. We then connect all these classes in a compartmental framework.