All state components are assumed to be column vectors. Additionally,
will always denote the number of
strata in the human population,
the number of aquatic habitats and the number of patches.
Human Movement
We start with the fundamental matrix which is of dimension , where each column gives the distribution of time at risk
for that strata over places (rows). If all strata are considered to be
potentially at risk 100% of the time, then the columns will sum to one,
which is the convention we will adopt for this document.
Then is the fraction
of time that strata spends in
patch .
Ambient Human Population
Let be a length column vector giving the population
size of each strata. Let be a
length column vector giving the
biting weights on each strata (the null value is ). We want to know , a length column vector which tells us how many
people are at each patch (summing over all strata who are there).
Each element of then
gives the total weighted person-time spent by all strata at that
location.
Biting Distribution Matrix
The biting distribution matrix is a matrix which is central to formulating mathematically
consistent models of bloodfeeding, and, by extension, consistent models
of mosquito-borne pathogen transmission.
It is given mathematically as:
And it can be written out component-wise as:
Now we can get a clearer impression of what is. It is the probability a
bite from mosquitoes in patch
lands on any particular person in strata . Another way say this is that it is the
proportion of person-time spent by a single person in strata at patch , out of all person-time spent at that
patch.
If we wanted to look at a matrix whose columns sum to unity and
elements give the probability of a bite taken on the ambient population
in patch to land on strata , we could look at the following
matrix:
This operation has the effect of multiplying each column in by the diagonal of of the matrix on
the left, so that the columns sum to one (or the column sums of , in case the total time at risk is
).
Likewise if we want to recover , a matrix whose rows describe how
each strata distributes its time across patches, one can simply multiply
on the right by
which has the effect of multiplying each column of by that element of the diagonal of
.
Human transmitting capacity (HTC)
Human transmitting capacity is a vector of length , each element of which gives the number
of net infectious days for an infected individual in each strata. For
the homogeneous SIS model, it is simply:
Parasite dispersal by mosquitoes
The parasite dispersal by mosquitoes matrix, is the spatial analogue to
vectorial capacity, which is the expected number of humans infected per
infected human, per day, assuming perfect transmission efficiency.
It can be understood by going from right to left. The matrix
is
a matrix, the diagonal
giving the numbers of bloodmeals taken on each person in each patch, per
day. Multiplying on the left by has the effect of
multiplying each column of the matrix on the left by the corresponding
element of the diagonal of the matrix on the right. That intermediate
matrix will have columns which describe how those bites/person from each
patch are distributed across other patches over the extrinsic incubation
period, accounting for mortality during that period. The final
multiplication on the left distributes those bites after the EIP has
passed.
If we only have a single patch, the formula becomes:
We can first examine the multiplication of
on the right. This has the effect of multiplying each column of by the diagonal of . This results
in a matrix whose columns
give the distribution of potentially transmitting person-time () a person in each strata
contributes to a patch. It is a matrix.
On the left multiplies each column of by the diagonal of that matrix;
this has the effect of recovering the original movement matrix . So multiplying the intermediate
matrix produced by the preceding section by this on the left distributes
that potentially-transmitting person time across patches. Therefore
-th column of describes how potentially
infectious person-time from a person infected in is distributed across other
patches.
In the 1 patch, 1 strata case, it simplifies considerably to:
Parasite Dispersal through one Parasite Generation
One way to look at parasite dispersal is to look at how parasites are
dispersed through one parasite generation. This can be done with from
mosquito to mosquito, or human to human. Below we show the equation for
parasite dispersal through a generation, beginning and ending with a
human host.
Here is a matrix, the columns of which
describe how infections starting in that strata are disseminated among
other strata after one generation. Once again we can learn how to
interpret the equation by walking from left to right. produces a matrix which describes how
infectious person-time in each strata is spread across patches.
Multiplication by then
describes how this infectious person-time is transformed into
potentially infectious bites by mosquitoes, distributed over space and
accounting for mortality during the EIP. Final multiplication by and takes into account where persons will
contact those infectious bites, and the transmission efficiency back to
human hosts.
Once again, we can take the 1 patch, 1 strata case to see how this
formula simplifies:
Which is precisely the formula for in Smith
and McKenzie (2004). Therefore is the “logical” spatial
version of this threshold metric.
If we track parasite dispersal from mosquitoes to mosquitoes we
arrive at the matrix:
In the 1 patch 1 strata case this becomes the same equation as
.