DescriptionMosquito-borne pathogens continue to afflict human populations around the world. Currently, our best methods for combatting the majority of them focus on controlling the vector species that transmit these pathogens. In the absence of systematic protocols developed by careful scientific research, current control methods vary significantly across space at multiple scales, and are reactively executed in response to various entomological and epidemiological indices. The resulting spatiotemporal patchwork of mosquito control across the local, regional, and global landscape provides the immediate potential to generate metapopulation dynamics in both mosquito vector species and the pathogens they transmit. In this dissertation, I explore these largely unstudied, novel dynamics, with the goal of illuminating ways in which mosquito control methods can better protect the global health landscape from mosquito-borne pathogens.
In chapter one, I examine the timing of larval control when triggered by different types and scales of surveillance information, and how well each surveillance type informs intervention that effectively reduces human infections. In chapter two, I explore how the spatial distribution of larval control across a landscape causes and interacts with mosquito metapopulation dynamics to determine the efficacy of control efforts. In chapter three, I compare the efficacies of adulticide treatment and larval control in reducing the number of human infections in different entomological contexts. Ultimately, all three chapters demonstrate that local context determines when and where different types of mosquito control should be used, and highlight the need for further basic and applied research on vector mosquitoes in order to develop cost-effective, context-specific programs for the control of mosquito-borne viruses.