RAPID: Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico: adult and larval mosquitoes, disturbance, and disease

该项目将探讨飓风事件后突然而重大的环境变化如何影响波多黎各两种重要疾病媒介——埃及伊蚊和中维伊蚊的幼虫和成虫种群，同时考虑岛上三种主要虫媒病毒（登革热、寨卡病毒、基孔肯雅热）的病毒感染状况。这项研究对于实施有效的病媒控制和公共卫生战略具有实际重要性，因为它将有助于预测未来飓风事件中疾病爆发的热点可能发生在哪里以及如何减轻这些热点，并且可以广泛地转移到其他地方（如佛罗里达州和德克萨斯州）。本研究的结果有助于了解有关突发景观干扰与病媒种群和疾病动态的基本生态学知识。这项建议将协助培训两名研究生和几名本科生，重点是人数不足的群体（即妇女和少数民族）。飓风玛丽亚提供了一个重要的机会，将极端干扰与疾病生态联系起来，包括影响营养物供应、洪水、病媒产生和病媒感染状况的碎屑投入的变化。使用生态过滤器作为框架，可以检查飓风引起的景观水平变化如何分别影响幼虫和成年种群，以及它们如何共同影响媒介种群和感染。化学计量学框架将利用以前从波多黎各收集的数据，并将资源环境的变化（由于飓风）与蚊子生产和感染动态联系起来。本文将采用结构方程建模的方法来了解野生蚊子在碎屑环境下滴度水平变化的基础及其对种群参数的影响。模型路径的重要性将通过简化模型的拟合来评估，相对于使用拟合优度卡方检验的完整模型。由于一些自变量之间可能存在非线性关联，因此将包括因变量的log10和二次变换，并将通过比较重要路径随时间的变化以及通过使用更传统的统计方法来评估影响。

This project will explore how sudden and significant environmental changes after a hurricane event affect both larval and adult populations of two important disease vectors, the mosquitoes Aedes aegypti and Aedes mediovittatus in Puerto Rico, considering the viral infection status of the three major arboviruses on the island (dengue, Zika, chikungunya). This research is of practical importance for the implementation of effective vector control and public health strategies as it will help anticipate where hot spots of disease outbreaks may occur in future hurricane events and how to mitigate them, is broadly transferable to other locations (such as Florida and Texas). Outcomes from this research contribute to fundamental ecological knowledge relating sudden landscape disturbance to vector population and disease dynamics. This proposal will assist in the training of two graduate students and several undergraduates, with an emphasis on underrepresented groups (i.e., women and minorities).Hurricane Maria provides an important opportunity to link extreme disturbance to disease ecology, including changes in detritus inputs that affect nutrient availability, flooding, production of vectors, and vector infection status across time. The use of ecological filters as a framework allows for an examination for how landscape level changes caused by the hurricane affect larval and adult populations separately, and how they collectively affect vector populations and infection. A stoichiometric framework will leverage previously collected data from Puerto Rico, and link changes in resource environments (due to the hurricane) to mosquito production and infection dynamics. A structural equation modeling approach will be used to understand the basis for variation of titer levels of wild caught mosquitoes based on the detrital environment and its effect on population parameters. The importance of a model's path will be assessed via the fit of reduced models, relative to a full model using goodness-of-fit chi-square tests. As non-linear associations may occur between some independent variables, log10 and quadratic transformations of dependent variables will be included, and effects will be assessed by comparing changes in important paths across time, as well as via the use of more traditional statistical approaches.