Mathematical and Behavioural Ecology of Human Disease Vectors in Response to Environmental Change - Afs, BfH, ENWW

Density dependence is a stage-specific process which is key to the regulation of populations[1]. In many species, the strength of density dependence may vary as a consequence of seasonal variation, resource availability, nutritional demands and habitat conditions. There is growing evidence for this in mosquito species as a result of laboratory[8, 9] and field studies[10, 11, 12]. However, there are large empirical knowledge gaps regarding the effects of environmental change on density-dependent processes. With environmental changes in climate and anthropogenic land use occurring at a high global rate it is important to understand how the environment can influence mosquito dynamics. These changes have the potential to change patterns of mosquito ecology through modifying density-dependent processes. As a consequence of these changes, the spread and distribution of mosquito-borne disease may be modified. In addition to limited empirical data, the majority of existing mathematical models of mosquito population dynamics and ecology consider only the influence of environment upon a single life-cycle stage and do not consider density dependence, or additionally ignore environmental modification altogether. Many models focus on single species in association with their environment. Therefore there is a need characterise mosquito population dynamics at multiple life-cycle stages in response to environmental change at the whole community level.

This PhD project will use density-dependent population dynamics as a case study to investigate the effects of environmental change upon mosquito population dynamics with the aim of informing future models and predictions of
mosquito-borne disease spread. This project will begin by modelling density dependence at the population level to consider its contribution to population dynamics. Secondly this project will investigate density dependence and its relation to land use and environmental change. This project will conduct a series of laboratory and field experiments to investigate density
dependent effects across environmental conditions.

BBSRC Priority Areas
Systems approaches to the biosciences
This priority falls under the enabling theme `Exploiting New Ways of Working'. This project includes a combination of mathematical, statistical and computational modelling as well as manipulative field work. This project aims to capture complex biological and ecological behaviour by integrating the necessary components and interactions and thereby simulate the biological system in a way that enables useful predictions to be made.