Speaker
Description
Many animal species have been shown to use search patterns described by Lévy flight instead of particle-like Brownian motion (\cite{Humphries2012}, \cite{Reynolds2007}, \cite{Sims2008}). To investigate which type of random walk describes the search pattern of mosquitoes, we analyse flight tracks obtained by infrared recordings of Anopheles mosquitoes in a screened cage by looking at the distribution of their step lengths. On the other hand, we set up and simulate different types of random walk models to extract those step lengths. To determine which random walk model fits the flight behaviour of mosquitoes and to build a final model, we compare the distributions of the step lengths yielded by the simulations to the distribution of the step lengths given by the recorded flight path data.
In a next step, we include stimuli into the simulations and scale up the model to the size of a village. The flight path simulation builds the foundation to model the dispersal of mosquitoes and hence helps to estimate the effect of interventions targeting the mosquito population to fight disease transmission, for example releasing mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria or genetically modified mosquitoes, or distributing tools such as spatial emanators, odour-baited traps for adult mosquitoes, attractive targeted sugar baits (ATSB), or oviposition traps to assess their impact. The goal is to use the model to suggest the optimal placement of interventions.
Bibliography
@article{Humphries2012,
title = {Foraging success of biological L{\'e}vy flights recorded in situ},
volume = {109},
issn = {0027-8424, 1091-6490},
url = {https://pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1121201109},
doi = {10.1073/pnas.1121201109},
language = {en},
number = {19},
urldate = {2026-03-27},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
author = {Humphries, Nicolas E. and Weimerskirch, Henri and Queiroz, Nuno and Southall, Emily J. and Sims, David W.},
month = may,
year = {2012},
pages = {7169--7174},
}
@article{Reynolds2007,
title = {Displaced honey bees perform optimal scale-free search flights},
volume = {88},
copyright = {http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/tdm_license_1.1},
issn = {0012-9658},
url = {http://doi.wiley.com/10.1890/06-1916.1},
doi = {10.1890/06-1916.1},
language = {en},
number = {8},
urldate = {2026-03-27},
journal = {Ecology},
author = {Reynolds, Andrew M. and Smith, Alan D. and Menzel, Randolf and Greggers, Uwe and Reynolds, Donald R. and Riley, Joseph R.},
month = aug,
year = {2007},
pages = {1955--1961},
}
@article{Sims2008,
title = {Scaling laws of marine predator search behaviour},
volume = {451},
copyright = {http://www.springer.com/tdm},
issn = {0028-0836, 1476-4687},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06518},
doi = {10.1038/nature06518},
language = {en},
number = {7182},
urldate = {2026-03-27},
journal = {Nature},
author = {Sims, David W. and Southall, Emily J. and Humphries, Nicolas E. and Hays, Graeme C. and Bradshaw, Corey J. A. and Pitchford, Jonathan W. and James, Alex and Ahmed, Mohammed Z. and Brierley, Andrew S. and Hindell, Mark A. and Morritt, David and Musyl, Michael K. and Righton, David and Shepard, Emily L. C. and Wearmouth, Victoria J. and Wilson, Rory P. and Witt, Matthew J. and Metcalfe, Julian D.},
month = feb,
year = {2008},
pages = {1098--1102},
}
