Arbovirus Transmission Predictions Are Affected by Both Temperature Data Source and Modeling Methodologies across Cities in Colombia

Abstract

Weather variables has been described as major drivers of vector proliferation and arbovirus transmission. Among them, temperature has consistently been found to be impactful in transmission dynamics, and models that incorporate temperature have been widely used to evaluate and forecast transmission or arboviruses like dengue, zika, or chikungunya virus. Further, there is growing evidence of the importance of micro-environmental temperatures in driving transmission of Aedes aegypti-borne viruses, as these mosquitoes tend to live within domiciles. Yet there is still a considerable gap in our understanding of how accounting for micro-environmental temperatures in models varies from the use of other widely-used, macro-level temperature measures. This effort combines field-collected data of both indoor and outdoor household associated temperatures and weather station temperature data from three Colombian cities to describe the relationship between the measures representing temperature at the micro- and macro-levels. These data indicate that weather station data may not accurately capture the temperature profiles of indoor micro-environments. However, using these data sources, the basic reproductive number for arboviruses was calculated by means of three modeling efforts to investigate whether temperature measure differences translated to differential transmission predictions. Across all three cities, it was determined that the modeling method was more often impactful rather than the temperature data-source, though no consistent pattern was immediately clear. This suggests that temperature data sources and modeling methods are important for precision in arbovirus transmission predictions, and more studies are needed to parse out this complex interaction.

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Chikungunya intra-vector dynamics in Aedes albopictus from Lyon (France) upon exposure to a human viremia-like dose range reveals vector barrier’s permissiveness and supports local epidemic potential

“…Several studies estimated VCap through the lens of mosquito density upon environmental variations (e.g. temperature, micro-climate, land cover) but with limited ecological (mosquito survival rate, biting rate, density per host) and VComp data, notably regarding intra-vector dynamics (Murdock et al, 2017;Wimberly et al, 2020;Peña-García et al, 2023). This highlights the current need for additional VComp and VCap-related studies using field-derived material, as well as increasing efforts between vector biology and modeling fields towards an integrative VCap estimation notably regarding intra-vector arbovirus dynamics.…”