Modelling the Temperature Sensitivity of Some Physiological Parameters of Epidemiologic Significance

ABSTRACT

Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are enhancing the natural greenhouse effect. It is almost universally accepted that this will lead to a warming of the earth’s surface. It is also accepted that this warming will lead to a spread of the insects that transmit several infections, currently restricted to the tropics, such as malaria, leishmaniasis, yellow fever, and dengue fever, among others. We calculated the expected increase in the density of female adult forms of anopheline mosquitoes by assuming temperature-dependent functions on the rates of the mosquitoes life cycles. Other mosquito characteristics, such as the feeding interval, were also calculated as functions of environmental temperature. The resultant increase in the density of adult females as a function of the increase in temperature was related to an increase in malaria risk by the calculations of the basic reproductive ratio and the vectorial capacity, which permitted the application of the mathematical model for malarial transmission.