A Dynamical Model of ’Invisible Wall’ in Mosquito Control

Abstract

A concept of an ’invisible wall’ is used here as a control mechanism to separate the human population from mosquitoes in the hope that mosquitoes gradually change their preference to other blood resources. Although mosquitoes carry inherent traits in host preference, in a situation in which regular blood resource is less available, and there are abundant other blood resources, mosquitoes may adapt to the existing new blood resource. Here we construct a model of mosquitoes preference alteration involving anthropophilic, opportunistic, and zoophilic, based on the application of repellent clothing usage and the effects of fumigation. The coexistence equilibrium is shown to be stable when the rate of mosquito ovulation, which is successfully hatching into larvae, is greater than the total of mosquito natural death rate and mosquito death rate due to fumigation. Numerical simulation is performed after the reduction of unobservable parameters is done with Human Blood Index (HBI) data. Global sensitivity analysis is then performed to determine the parameters that provide the dominant alteration effect on the mosquito population. The simulation results show that a proper selection of the fumigation rate and repellent clothing rate should be carefully done in order to reduce the mosquito population as well as to increase the zoophilic ratio.