An agent-based model of a cutaneous leishmaniasis reservoir host, Meriones shawi

Meriones shawi (M.shawi) is the main reservoir host for zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (ZCL) in Central Tunisia. The incorporation of environmental and climatic effects on the spread of ZCL in M. shawi remains difficult. This study presents an agent-based model (ABM) to overcome these difficulties and examine the impact of environment (i.e. vegetation cover) and climate (i.e. temperature) on M. shawi movement and prevalence. The model simulation considers two agent types: rodent agent and field unit agent. We tested the model according to two types of rodent movement: random and thoughtful. We integrated time dependent normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in order to test the land cover effects on rodent movement and ZCL transmission. The results confirmed that the spread of the disease depends on rodent movement. We observed that prevalence and distribution are the closest to field data when the vegetation cover is highest and that rodents go for thoughtful movement. In addition, we found that the nature of movement (random or thoughtful) and prevalence depends strongly on minimum food detection.