Uncovering temperature sensitivity of West Nile virus transmission: Novel computational approaches to...

Temperature influences the transmission of mosquito-borne pathogens with significant implications for disease risk under climate change. Mathematical models of mosquito-borne infections rely on functions that capture mosquito-pathogen interactions in response to temperature to accurately estimate transmission dynamics. For deriving these functions, experimental studies provide valuable data on the temperature sensitivity of mosquito life-history traits and pathogen transmission. However, the scarcity of experimental data and inconsistencies in methodologies for analysing temperature responses across mosquito species, pathogens, and experiments present major challenges. Here, we introduce a new approach to address these challenges. We apply this framework to study the thermal biology of West Nile virus (WNV). We reviewed existing experimental studies, obtaining temperature responses for eight mosquito-pathogen traits across 15 mosquito species. Using these data, we employed Bayesian hierarchical models to estimate temperature response functions for each trait and their variation between species and experiments. We incorporated the resulting functions into mathematical models to estimate the temperature sensitivity of WNV transmission, focusing on six mosquito species of the genus Culex. Our study finds a general optimal transmission temperature around 24°C among Culex species with only small species-specific deviations. We demonstrate that differing mechanistic assumptions underlying published mosquito population models result in temperature optima estimates that differ by up to 3°C. Additionally, we find substantial variability between trait temperature responses across experiments on the same species, possibly indicating significant intra-species variation in trait performance. We identify mosquito biting rate, lifespan, and egg viability as priorities for future experiments, as they strongly influence estimates of temperature limits, optima, and overall uncertainty in transmission suitability. Experimental studies on vector competence traits are also essential, because limited data on these currently require model simplifications. These data would enhance the accuracy of our estimates, critical for anticipating future shifts in WNV risk under climate change.