Fig 1. Models for malaria transmission dynamics are naturally modular (see Eq 1).

The dynamic modules describe a stratified human population (purple) that interacts through blood feeding (red) with adult mosquito populations in a discrete spatial domain; each patch could contain a set of aquatic habitats. Two components, $\mathcal{L}$ and $\mathcal{M}$, describe mosquito ecology: dynamics of immature mosquitoes (blue) in aquatic habitats are described by a system of equations $d\mathcal{L}/dt$; and dynamics of adult mosquitoes (green) are described by $d\mathcal{M}/dt$. Habitat locations within patches are described by a membership matrix, $\mathcal{N}$. Eggs hatch into larval mosquitoes, that develop, pupate, and later emerge from habitats as mature adults (α) and added to the adult populations in each patch (Λ). Adults lay eggs (ν), which are distributed spatially according to which patch habitats belong ($\mathcal{N}$). Egg deposition rates at the habitats are (η). Two additional components, $\mathcal{Y}$ and $\mathcal{X}$, describe parasite infection dynamics and transmission: that for mosquitoes, described by $d\mathcal{Y}/dt$ and in humans, described by $d\mathcal{X}/dt$, are linked through parasite transmission. A new model for blood feeding describes how blood meals are allocated among humans (β) and associated parasite transmission rates: the density of infectious humans by strata (X) is used to compute net infectiousness (NI) of humans to mosquitoes in patches (κ); and the density of infectious blood feeding mosquitoes (Z) is used to compute the entomological inoculation rate (EIR) on each strata (E).