MOSQUITO FLIGHT MODEL AND APPLICATIONS IN MALARIA CONTROL

Understanding the movement pattern of mosquitoes is necessary in malaria research, especially in network modeling, which is based on the fact that the interactions between mosquitoes and human hosts (through blood sucking bites) sustain malaria transmissions. Flight attributes such as direction of flight, length of flight, determinants of flights, among others will affect the overall dynamics of the human-mosquito network. This paper reviews related works on mosquito flight behaviour, gives brief treatment on how this is applied in mosquito traps technology, and as well as outlines the overall implications of mosquito flight patterns to network-based modeling. This work is part of an ongoing research project on network based modeling approach to malaria research with particular interest on the prediction of the public places that act as vector reservoirs.