Ogunlade ST, Adekunle AI, McBryde ES, Meehan MT. Modelling the ecological dynamics of mosquito populations with multiple co-circulating Wolbachia strains.
Sci Rep 2022;
12:20826. [PMID:
36460676 PMCID:
PMC9718785 DOI:
10.1038/s41598-022-25242-x]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2022] [Accepted: 11/28/2022] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
Wolbachia intracellular bacteria successfully reduce the transmissibility of arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) when introduced into virus-carrying vectors such as mosquitoes. Despite the progress made by introducing Wolbachia bacteria into the Aedes aegypti wild-type population to control arboviral infections, reports suggest that heat-induced loss-of-Wolbachia-infection as a result of climate change may reverse these gains. Novel, supplemental Wolbachia strains that are more resilient to increased temperatures may circumvent these concerns, and could potentially act synergistically with existing variants. In this article, we model the ecological dynamics among three distinct mosquito (sub)populations: a wild-type population free of any Wolbachia infection; an invading population infected with a particular Wolbachia strain; and a second invading population infected with a distinct Wolbachia strain from that of the first invader. We explore how the range of possible characteristics of each Wolbachia strain impacts mosquito prevalence. Further, we analyse the differential system governing the mosquito populations and the Wolbachia infection dynamics by computing the full set of basic and invasive reproduction numbers and use these to establish stability of identified equilibria. Our results show that releasing mosquitoes with two different strains of Wolbachia did not increase their prevalence, compared with a single-strain Wolbachia-infected mosquito introduction and only delayed Wolbachia dominance.
Collapse