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A spatiotemporal model of ecological and sociological predictors of West Nile virus in Suffolk County, NY mosquitoes
Citation:
Myer, M., S. Campbell, AND JohnM Johnston. A spatiotemporal model of ecological and sociological predictors of West Nile virus in Suffolk County, NY mosquitoes. 2017 Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting, OR, Portland, August 06 - 11, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
Presented at the 2017 Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting.
Description:
Background/Question/Methods Suffolk County, New York is a locus for West Nile virus (WNV) infection in the American northeast that includes the majority of Long Island to the east of New York City. The county has a robust system of light and gravid traps used for mosquito collection and disease monitoring. Since 2010, there have been 55 confirmed human cases of WNV in Suffolk County, resulting in 3 deaths. In order to identify predictors of WNV incidence in mosquitoes and predict future occurrence of WNV we developed a spatiotemporal Bayesian model, beginning with over 40 ecological, meteorological, and built-environment covariates. A mixed effects model including spatially and temporally correlated errors was fit to WNV surveillance data from 2008-2014 using the R package 'R-INLA' which allows for Bayesian modeling using the stochastic partial differential equation (SPDE) approach. The INLA SPDE allows for simultaneous fitting of temporal parameters and a spatial covariance matrix, while incorporating multiple likelihood functions and running in standard R statistical software on a typical home computer. Results/Conclusions We found that land cover classified as open water or woody wetlands had a negative association with WNV incidence in mosquitoes, and the count of septic systems was associated with an increase in WNV. Mean temperature at two weeks lag was associated with a strong positive impact, while mean precipitation at no lag and one week lag were associated with positive and negative impacts on WNV, respectively. Incorporation of spatiotemporal factors resulted in a marked increase in model goodnessof-fit. The predictive power of the model was evaluated on 2015 surveilla nee results, where the best model achieved a sensitivity of 80.9% and a specificity of 77.0%. The spatial covariate was mapped across the county, identifying a gradient of WNV prevalence increasing from east to west. The Bayesian spatiotemporal model improves upon previous approaches, and we recommend the INLA SPDE methodology as an efficient way to develop robust models from surveillance data to develop and enhance monitoring and control programs. Our study confirms previously-found associations between weather conditions and WNV and suggests that wetland cover has a mitigating effect on WNV infection in mosquitoes, while high septic system density is associated with an increase in WNV infection.
