Vector bionomics and vectorial capacity as emergent properties of mosquito behaviors and ecology
Fig 2
The structure of a blood feeding attempt bout in MBITES.
The flowchart follows the progression of a mosquito through simulated events, from the launch (dark grey oval), choosing a host from the atRiskQ (aquamarine diamond), and the events that follow depending on what sort of host was chosen (yellow rectangles). If a human is chosen (or more generally, a blood host that is also a host for the pathogen), then each mosquito must approach and attempt to probe (salmon rectangle) and then blood feed (red rectangle). If a non-human host is, probing is ignored. Traps mimicking a blood host can also be chosen. After a blood meal (red rectangle), a mosquito must land and choose a resting spot (yellow diamonds). A post-prandial resting period follows a successful blood meal which has its own hazards (purple oval), including additional hazards associated with a flight laden with blood, which may be followed by decision to feed again (dark red diamond). Similarly, after failing the attempt (green pentagons to green rectangle), a mosquito must land and choose a resting spot (yellow diamonds). At each step, it is possible to die (light grey ovals). At any point when failure occurs or during landing, a mosquito could choose to leave the haunt and initiate a search on the next bout. This condition is checked after completing the bout (pink diamond). At the end of a bout, the mosquito’s behavioral state and other state variables are updated. The endpoint of each bout is either death (grey ovals), a repeated blood feeding attempt (dark red oval) or a state transition to either a blood feeding search (pink oval) or to oviposit (blue ovals).