Authors

Discussion

Plasmodium falciparum malaria remains a leading cause of death in tropical regions of the world. Despite efforts to drive transmission down, rebound  epidemics associated with the persistence of malaria vectors have remained a major impediment to local elimination. One area that remains poorly understood is how Anopheles populations survive long dry seasons to re-emerge following the onset of the rains. We developed mathematical models to explore the impact of different mosquito survival strategies on the dynamics of the vector population. We show that mosquitoes have different lifestyles between the wet season and the dry season. Their ability to persist is attributed by their propensity to exploit the wet season (fast and high  reproductive output), but then mitigate the effects of the dry season (longevity and aestivation). We demonstrate that aestivation is a population rescue strategy that makes ecological vector population extinction difficult, while wet season high reproductive output buffers the population against dry season potential extinction. We show that both longevity/aestivation and high wet reproduction allow persistence of the mosquitoes, and can reproduce patterns observed in field data from the Sahel region. Our results highly illustrate how aestivation/hibernation makes local vector elimination a challenge. Therefore, making the prospects of eliminating mosquitoes, with the current tools, in region