Marshall John M, Yang Shuyi, Bennett Jared B, Filipović Igor, Rašić Gordana
Divisions of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Innovative Genomics Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
bioRxiv. 2025 May 15:2025.05.11.653364. doi: 10.1101/2025.05.11.653364.
Close-kin mark-recapture (CKMR) methods have recently been used to infer demographic parameters for several aquatic and terrestrial species. For mosquitoes, the spatial distribution of close-kin pairs has been used to estimate mean dispersal distance, of relevance to vector-borne disease transmission and genetic biocontrol strategies. Close-kin methods have advantages over traditional mark-release-recapture (MRR) methods as the mark is genetic, removing the need for physical marking and recapturing that may interfere with movement behavior. Here, we extend CKMR methods to accommodate spatial structure alongside life history for mosquitoes and comparable insects. We derive kinship probabilities for parent-offspring and full-sibling pairs in a spatial context, where an individual in each pair may be a larva or adult. Using the dengue vector as a case study, we use an individual-based model of mosquito life history to test the effectiveness of this approach at estimating parameters such as mean dispersal distance, daily staying probability, and the strength of a barrier to movement. Considering a simulated population of 9,025 adult mosquitoes arranged on a 19-by-19 grid, we find the CKMR approach provides unbiased and precise estimates of mean dispersal distance given a total of 2,500 adult females sampled over a three-month period using 25 traps evenly spread throughout the landscape. The CKMR approach is also able to estimate parameters of more complex dispersal kernels, such as the daily staying probability of a zero-inflated exponential kernel, or the strength of a barrier to movement, provided the magnitude of these parameters is greater than 0.5. These results suggest that CKMR provides an insightful characterization of mosquito dispersal that is complementary to conventional MRR methods.
近亲标记重捕（CKMR）方法最近已被用于推断几种水生和陆生物种的种群统计学参数。对于蚊子而言，近亲对的空间分布已被用于估计平均扩散距离，这与媒介传播疾病的传播以及遗传生物防治策略相关。近亲方法相较于传统的标记释放重捕（MRR）方法具有优势，因为标记是遗传的，无需进行可能干扰移动行为的物理标记和重捕。在此，我们扩展了CKMR方法，以适应蚊子及类似昆虫的空间结构和生活史。我们推导了空间背景下亲子对和全同胞对的亲属关系概率，其中每对中的个体可能是幼虫或成虫。以登革热媒介为例，我们使用基于个体的蚊子生活史模型来测试这种方法在估计诸如平均扩散距离、每日停留概率以及移动障碍强度等参数方面的有效性。考虑一个由9025只成年蚊子组成的模拟种群，它们分布在一个19×19的网格上，我们发现，在三个月的时间里使用25个均匀分布在整个区域的诱捕器对总共2500只成年雌性蚊子进行采样的情况下，CKMR方法能够提供无偏且精确的平均扩散距离估计值。CKMR方法还能够估计更复杂扩散核的参数，例如零膨胀指数核的每日停留概率，或者移动障碍的强度，前提是这些参数的大小大于0.5。这些结果表明，CKMR为蚊子扩散提供了一种有见地的特征描述，是对传统MRR方法的补充。
