What is needed for the mosquito perfect storm?

Christina Cobbold together with collaborators Steven White, Miles Nunn and Beth Purse at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford were recently awarded a NERC PhD studentship to develop mathematical models to help understand how environmental drivers (such as rainfall and temperature) alter mosquito abundance in the UK. The timing and magnitude of multiple environmenal drivers could combine to provide the perfect storm, causing mosquito dynmaic abundance capable of sustaining mosquito-bourne diseas such as West Nile virus.

New Phd student David Ewing has been recruited onto the project to develop a mathematical model of the mosquito life-cycle.

David will also be collecting field caught populations of mosquitos to study in the laboratory to help parametise his model which will be used to develop risk maps of UK mosquito outbreaks.