title: Effects of rainfall on Culex mosquito population dynamics.
abstract: 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 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 Mmaxis a maximum. On the other hand, we show that increasing daily rainfall variability reduces the dependence of Mmaxon 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.
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba; Instituto de Física Enrique Gaviola, CONICET, Ciudad Universitaria, 5000 Córdoba, Argentina. Electronic address: lvaldez@famaf.unc.edu.ar.
authors.forename: L D
authors.initials: LD
authors.lastname: Valdez
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba; Instituto de Física Enrique Gaviola, CONICET, Ciudad Universitaria, 5000 Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: G J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Sibona
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas y Tecnológicas-CONICET-Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina; Laboratorio de Arbovirus-Instituto de Virología "Dr. J. M. Vanella"-Facultad de Ciencias Médicas-Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Diaz
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Arbovirus-Instituto de Virología "Dr. J. M. Vanella"-Facultad de Ciencias Médicas-Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Contigiani
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba; Instituto de Física Enrique Gaviola, CONICET, Ciudad Universitaria, 5000 Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Condat
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D057231:Climate Change; D003465:Culex; D009033:Culicidae; D011157:Population Dynamics / Q000639:trends; D011891:Rain; D013696:Temperature; D014887:Weather
keywords: Arbovirus; Culex; Mathematical modeling; Mosquito abundance; Rainfall