MODELING THE TEMPERATURE SENSITIVITY OF SOME PHYSIOLOGICAL-PARAMETERSOF EPIDEMIOLOGIC SIGNIFICANCE

Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are enhancing the natural greenhouse effect. It is almost universally accepted that this will le ad to a warming of the earth's surface. It is also accepted that this warming will lead to a spread of the insects that transmit several inf ections, currently restricted to the tropics, such as malaria, leishma niasis, yellow fever, and dengue fever, among others. We calculated th e expected increase in the density of female adult forms of anopheline mosquitoes by assuming temperature-dependent functions on the rates o f the mosquitoes life cycles. Other mosquito characteristics, such as the feeding interval, were also calculated as functions of environment al temperature. The resultant increase in the density of adult females as a function of the increase in temperature was related to an increa se in malaria risk by the calculations of the basic reproductive ratio and the vectorial capacity, which permitted the application of the ma thematical model for malarial transmission.