Dinámica espaciotemporal de la población del mosquito Aedes aegypti (L.) en la zona del Caño Martín Peña en San Juan de Puerto Rico durante los años epidemiológicos 2018–2019; repercusiones a la salud para los residentes de las comunidades aledañas

Abstract

The population dynamical system of Ae. aegypti in the premises around the Caño Martín Peña water body was studied (San Juan). Data from 2018 and 2019 were used to count gravid female Ae. aegypti mosquitoes in the study area to determine the seasonality of the vector populations, search for hot and persistent spots, and quantify the risk for arboviral disease outbreak posed to public health inside the study zone. Bayesian statistics provided by a GIS program were used to detect spatiotemporal relationships and develop risk maps for arboviral diseases. A generalized linear regression model controlling for heteroscedasticity was generated to describe the dependent variable versus different meteorological explanatory variables. It was found that the Ae. aegypti population system in the study area behaved persistently and very stably (marginally statistically significant, p < .10), with higher mosquito densities over more densely populated residential areas with less efficient sanitary sewerage. Rising ambient temperature interacts with the dependent variable, making its value higher (p < .001). It is concluded that the State/society should act immediately in the study region to mitigate the present problem of unusually high density of Ae. aegypti mosquitoes, which is currently causing cases of arboviral diseases (p < .01). The use of chaos theory is also encouraged to complement the entomological findings obtained using linear equations and non-linear techniques. In addition, we propose the use of the systemic dependent variable Systemic Tau, a surrogate variable of the dependent variable Count/EpiWeek or fractal variable, to study the population system of Aedes sp. mosquitoes in the ZE at the level of phase space or from the chaos theory.