Analytic Approximation of Invasion Wave Amplitude Predicts Severity of Insect Outbreaks

Outbreaks of phytophagous forest insects are largely driven by host demographics and spatial effects of dispersal. We develop a structured integrodifference equation (IDE) outbreak model that tracks the demographics of sedentary hosts under insect infestation pressure. The model is appropriate for a spectrum of pests attacking the later age classes of long-lived hosts, including mountain pine beetle (MPB), spruce budworm, and spruce beetle, which, among them are responsible for more forest damage than fire. The model generates a train of periodic waves of infestation. We approximate the IDE with a partial differential equation and search for traveling wave solutions. The resulting ordinary differential equation predicts the shape of an outbreak wave profile and peak infestation as functions of wavefront speed, which can be calculated analytically. This culminates in the derivation of an explicit approximation of invasion wave amplitude based on net reproductive rate of the infesting insect and its host searching efficiency. Results are compared with observations taken during a recent MPB outbreak in the northern US Rocky Mountains

Mathematical modelling and analysis of HIV transmission dynamics

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis firstly presents a nonlinear extended deterministic Susceptible-Infected (SI) model for assessing the impact of public health education campaign on curtailing the spread of the HIV pandemic in a population. Rigorous qualitative analysis of the model reveals that, in contrast to the model without education, the full model with education exhibits the phenomenon of backward bifurcation (BB), where a stable disease-free equilibrium coexists with a stable endemic equilibrium when a certain threshold quantity, known as the effective reproduction number (Reff ), is less than unity. Furthermore, an explicit threshold value is derived above which such an education campaign could lead to detrimental outcome (increase disease burden), and below which it would have positive population-level impact (reduce disease burden in the community). It is shown that the BB phenomenon is caused by imperfect efficacy of the public health education program. The model is used to assess the potential impact of some targeted public health education campaigns using data from numerous countries. The second problem considered is a Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) model with two types of nonlinear treatment rates: (i) piecewise linear treatment rate with saturation effect, (ii) piecewise constant treatment rate with a jump (Heaviside function). For Case (i), we construct travelling front solutions whose profiles are heteroclinic orbits which connect either the disease-free state to an infected state or two endemic states with each other. For Case (ii), it is shown that the profile has the following properties: the number of susceptible individuals is monotone increasing and the number of infectives approaches zero, while their product converges to a constant. Numerical simulations are shown which confirm these analytical results. Abnormal behavior like travelling waves with non-monotone profile or oscillations are observed.Kano State Government of Nigeri

Describing the geographic spread of dengue disease by traveling waves,”

a b s t r a c t Dengue is a human disease transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti. For this reason geographical regions infested by this mosquito species are under the risk of dengue outbreaks. In this work, we propose a mathematical model to study the spatial dissemination of dengue using a system of partial differential reaction-diffusion equations. With respect to the human and mosquito populations, we take into account their respective subclasses of infected and uninfected individuals. The dynamics of the mosquito population considers only two subpopulations: the winged form (mature female mosquitoes), and an aquatic population (comprising eggs, larvae and pupae). We disregard the long-distance movement by transportation facilities, for which reason the diffusion is considered restricted only to the winged form. The human population is considered homogeneously distributed in space, in order to describe localized dengue dissemination during a short period of epidemics. The cross-infection is modeled by the law of mass action. A threshold value as a function of the model's parameters is obtained, which determines the rate of dengue dissemination and the risk of dengue outbreaks. Assuming that an area was previously colonized by the mosquitoes, the rate of disease dissemination is determined as a function of the model's parameters. This rate of dissemination of dengue disease is determined by applying the traveling wave solutions to the corresponding system of partial differential equations

Traveling Wave Solutions for a Delayed SIRS Infectious Disease Model with Nonlocal Diffusion and Nonlinear Incidence

A delayed SIRS infectious disease model with nonlocal diffusion and nonlinear incidence is investigated. By constructing a pair of upper-lower solutions and using Schauder's fixed point theorem, we derive the existence of a traveling wave solution connecting the disease-free steady state and the endemic steady state

Singular measure traveling waves in an epidemiological model with continuous phenotypes

We consider the reaction-diffusion equation \begin{equation*} u_t=u_{xx}+\mu\left(\int_\Omega M(y,z)u(t,x,z)dz-u\right) + u\left(a(y)-\int_\Omega K(y,z) u(t,x,z)dz\right) , \end{equation*} where $u=u(t,x,y)$ stands for the density of a theoretical population with a spatial ($x\in\mathbb R$) and phenotypic ($y\in\Omega\subset \mathbb R^n$) structure, $M(y,z)$ is a mutation kernel acting on the phenotypic space, $a(y)$ is a fitness function and $K(y,z)$ is a competition kernel. Using a vanishing viscosity method, we construct measure-valued traveling waves for this equation, and present particular cases where singular traveling waves do exist. We determine that the speed of the constructed traveling waves is the expected spreading speed $c^*:=2\sqrt{-\lambda_1}$, where $\lambda_1$ is the principal eigenvalue of the linearized equation. As far as we know, this is the first construction of a measure-valued traveling wave for a reaction-diffusion equation