Papers › Effects of rainfall on Culex mosquito population dynamics
Effects of rainfall on Culex mosquito population dynamics
L. D. Valdez, G. J. Sibona, L. A. Diaz, M. S. Contigiani, C. A. Condat
The dynamics of a mosquito population depends heavily on climatic variables such as temperature and precipitation. Since climate change models predict that global warming will impact on the frequency and intensity of rainfall, it is important to understand how these variables affect the mosquito populations. We present a model of the dynamics of a {\it Culex quinquefasciatus} mosquito population that incorporates the effect of rainfall and use it to study the influence of the number of rainy days and the mean monthly precipitation on the maximum yearly abundance of mosquitoes Mₘₐₓ. Additionally, using a fracturing process, we investigate the influence of the variability in daily rainfall on Mₘₐₓ. We find that, given a constant value of monthly precipitation, there is an optimum number of rainy days for which Mₘₐₓ is a maximum. On the other hand, we show that increasing daily rainfall variability reduces the dependence of Mₘₐₓ on the number of rainy days, leading also to a higher abundance of mosquitoes for the case of low mean monthly precipitation. Finally, we explore the effect of the rainfall in the months preceding the wettest season, and we obtain that a regimen with high precipitations throughout the year and a higher variability tends to advance slightly the time at which the peak mosquito abundance occurs, but could significantly change the total mosquito abundance in a year.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections