Impulsive Release Strategies for Wolbachia-Infected Mosquitoes Under Temperature-Induced Infection Loss.

Abstract

The release of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes is a promising strategy for controlling Aedes aegypti populations, although high-temperature exposure may temporarily reduce infection levels and compromise long-term persistence. We propose a population-dynamics model based on impulsive differential equations that incorporates cytoplasmic incompatibility, periodic mosquito releases, and temperature-driven infection loss. Analytical results establish fundamental qualitative properties of the continuous and impulsive models, derive conditions for the existence and stability of periodic solutions, and provide an explicit release threshold for the successful establishment and long-term persistence of the infected population. Numerical simulations validate the theoretical results and compare the performance of the wMelPop, wMel, and wAlbB strains under different thermal scenarios, highlighting the influence of strain-specific fitness costs and thermal tolerance. Additional simulations investigate temperature-dependent demographic variation and imperfect maternal transmission, extending the analysis beyond the assumptions of the analytical framework. The proposed approach provides a tractable mathematical framework for analyzing and designing impulsive Wolbachia release strategies under environmentally driven infection loss.