Time series analysis of survival and oviposition cycle duration of Anopheles funestus (Giles) in Mozambique

Funding Information: This work was supported by core funding from the DBL, Copenhagen, Denmark, which received a grant from DANIDA which financed the project; and by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (INV025569). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: Copyright 2023 Charlwood et al. ; Background: Survival and gonotrophic cycle duration are important determinants of the vectorial capacity of malaria vectors but there are a limited number of approaches to estimate these quantities from field data. Time-series of observations of mosquitoes at different stages in the life-cycle are under-used. Methods: Anopheles funestus mosquitoes were caught using various methods over a 7.6-year period in Furvela, Mozambique. Survival and oviposition cycle duration were estimated using (i) an existing time-series approach for analysing dissections of mosquitoes caught in light-traps, extended to allow for variability in the duration of the cycle; (ii) an established approach for estimating cycle duration from resting collection data; (iii) a novel time-series approach fitted to numbers and categories of mosquitoes caught in exit-traps. Results: Data were available from 7,396, 6,041 and 1,527 trap-nights for exit-traps, light-traps and resting collections respectively. Estimates of cycle duration varied considerably between the different methods. The estimated proportion of female mosquitoes surviving each day of 0.740 (95% credible interval [0.650–0.815]) derived from light-trap data was much lower than the estimated daily survival of male mosquitoes from the model fitted to exit-trap data (0.881, 95% credible interval [0.747–0.987]). There was no tendency for the oviposition cycle to become shorter at higher temperature while the odds of survival of females through the cycle was estimated to be multiplied by 1.021 for every degree of mean weekly temperature increase (95% credible interval [0.991–1.051]). There was ...