We use a compartmental model to illustrate a possible mechanism for multiple outbreaks or even sustained periodic oscillations of emerging infectious diseases due to the psychological impact of the reported numbers of infectious and hospitalized individuals. This impact leads to the change of avoidance and contact patterns at both individual and community levels, and incorporating this impact using a simple nonlinear incidence function into the model shows qualitative differences of the transmission dynamics.

A big problem in malaria control is the rapidity with which mosquitoes can develop resistance to insecticides. The possibility of creating evolution-proof insecticides is therefore of considerable interest. Biologists have suggested that effective malaria control, with only weak selection for insecticide resistance, could be achieved if insecticides target only old mosquitoes that have already laid most of their eggs. The strategy aims to exploit the fact that most malarial mosquitoes do not live long enough to transmit the disease. We derive, analyse and compare two mathematical models, one for an insecticide that kills on exposure, and the other for an insecticide that targets only older mosquitoes. Both models predict that insecticide-resistant mosquitoes will become dominant over time but, very importantly, this occurs on a very much slower time scale when the insecticide only affects older mosquitoes. We present analytical results on linear and global stability of the nontrivial equilibrium in which only the resistant mosquito strain is present, together with a theorem comparing the rates of convergence for the two models. Numerical simulations show that the effect of targeting only old mosquitoes on the evolution of resistance is dramatic.

Wolbachia is possibly the most studied reproductive parasite of arthropod species. It appears to be a promising candidate for biocontrol of some mosquito borne diseases. We begin by developing a sex-structured model for a Wolbachia infected mosquito population. Our model incorporates the key effects of Wolbachia infection including cytoplasmic incompatibility and male killing. We also allow the possibility of reduced reproductive output, incomplete maternal transmission, and different mortality rates for uninfected/infected male/female individuals. We study the existence and local stability of equilibria, including the biologically relevant and interesting boundary equilibria. For some biologically relevant parameter regimes there may be multiple coexistence steady states including, very importantly, a coexistence steady state in which Wolbachia infected individuals dominate. We also extend the model to incorporate West Nile virus (WNv) dynamics, using an SEI modelling approach. Recent evidence suggests that a particular strain of Wolbachia infection significantly reduces WNv replication in Aedes aegypti. We model this via increased time spent in the WNv-exposed compartment for Wolbachia infected female mosquitoes. A basic reproduction number is computed for the WNv infection. Our results suggest that, if the mosquito population consists mainly of Wolbachia infected individuals, WNv eradication is likely if WNv replication in Wolbachia infected individuals is sufficiently reduced.

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We derive and analyze a mathematical model for the spatiotemporal distribution of a migratory bird species. The birds have specific sites for breeding and winter feeding, and usually several stopover sites along the migration route, and therefore a patch model is the natural choice. However, we also model the journeys of the birds along the flyways and this is achieved using a continuous space model of reaction-advection type. In this way proper account is taken of flight times and in-flight mortalities which may vary from sector to sector, and this information features in the ordinary differential equations for the populations on the patches through the values of the time delays and the model coefficients. The seasonality of the phenomenon is accommodated by having periodic migration and birth rates.The central result of the paper is a very general theorem on the threshold dynamics, obtained using recent results on discrete monotone dynamical systems, for birth functions which are subhomogeneous. For such functions, depending on the spectral radius of a certain operator, either there is a globally attracting periodic solution, or the bird population becomes extinct. Evaluation of the spectral radius is difficult so we also present, for the particular case of just one stopover site on the migration route, a verifiable sufficient condition for extinction or survival in a form of an attractive periodic solution. This threshold is illustrated numerically using data from the U.S. Geological Survey on the Bar-headed goose and its migration to India from its main breeding sites around Lake Qinghai and Mongolia.