APPLIED MATHEMATICS COLLOQUIUM
Date: Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Time: 2:30 – 3:30 p.m.
Location: Middlesex College Room 204
Evaluating the role of white-tailed deer in
geographic spread of the blacklegged tick Ixodes
scapularis: a spatially nonlocal model
Dr. Xingfu Zou
Department of Applied Mathematics, Western University
Abstract:
Lyme disease is transmitted via blacklegged ticks, and the spatial spread of
the blacklegged ticks is believed to be though the white tail deer. In this talk, I
will present mathematical model to describe the spatial spread of blacklegged
ticks through the dispersal of the white tail deer. The model turns out to be a
system of differential equations with a spatially non-local term accounting for
the phenomenon that a questing female adult tick attaching to a deer at one
location may fall back, after being fully fed, to the ground at another location
due to the deer's dispersal. Among the topics we have explored on this model
are well-posedness, the stability of the steady states, existence of traveling
wave fronts connecting distinction equilibrium and a positive equilibrium for
the system, minimal speed of traveling wave fronts, spread speed and its
coincidence with the minimal wave speed, and dependence of this speed on
the dispersal rate of white-tailed deer.
Western University, Middlesex College, Rm. 255, 1151 Richmond St. London, ON, Canada N6A 5B7
Tel: +1 519 661 3649, FAX: +1 519 661 3523. Home page: www.apmaths.uwo.ca.