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Environmental and Ecological Statistics

, Volume 21, Issue 4, pp 651–666 | Cite as

Clustering of the abundance of West Nile virus vector mosquitoes in Peel Region, Ontario, Canada

  • Xiaogang Wang
  • Jiafeng Wang
  • Curtis Russell
  • Paul Proctor
  • Richard Bello
  • Kaz Higuchi
  • Huaiping ZhuEmail author
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Understanding the spatial–temporal distribution of vector mosquitoes is essential in designing an efficient mosquito control strategy to reduce the risk of the mosquito-borne disease. In this paper, we apply a non-parametric clustering method, CLUES, to the surveillance data of West Nile virus vector mosquitoes collected by light traps in Peel Region, Ontario, during the mosquito seasons in 2004–2010. In order to obtain robust and reliable results, a statistical smoothing procedure LOWESS is applied to the original time series data. It was found that the mosquito trap sites can be clustered into three groups. The weather impact on the mosquito abundance of each clustered group are similar, while the interannual variability and the highest abundance and peak time in each mosquito season are different. The impact of weather factors on this clustering is investigated.

Keywords

Abundance Automatic clustering Culex pipiens/restuans mosquitoes  \(k\)-Nearest neighbors Local shrinking Precipitation Temperature 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editor, the associated editor and two reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that greatly improve the quality and presentation of the paper. The opinions, results and conclusions reported in this paper are those of the authors. No endorsement by the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion is intended or should be inferred.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Xiaogang Wang
    • 1
  • Jiafeng Wang
    • 1
  • Curtis Russell
    • 2
  • Paul Proctor
    • 3
  • Richard Bello
    • 4
  • Kaz Higuchi
    • 5
    • 6
  • Huaiping Zhu
    • 1
    Email author
  1. 1.LAMPS, Department of Mathematics and StatisticsYork UniversityTorontoCanada
  2. 2.Enteric, Zoonotic and Vector-Borne DiseasesPublic Health OntarioTorontoCanada
  3. 3.Environmental Health, Vector-Borne Diseases TeamRegion of PeelCanada
  4. 4.Department of GeographyYork UniversityTorontoCanada
  5. 5.Faculty of Environmental StudiesYork UniversityTorontoCanada
  6. 6.Adaptation and Impacts Research SectionEnvironment CanadaTorontoCanada

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