Fig. 3

Made-up examples of host-seeking behaviour model without trap for three situations: high availability rate and low mortality rate (black), low availability and low mortality rate (dark grey), high availability and high mortality (light grey). The solid curves represent the probability \(P_{\text {H}}(t)\) to get caught by HLC, the dashed curves represent the probability \(P_{\text {M}}(t)\) to die and the dotted curves represent the probability \(P_{\text {A}}(t)\) to be in the host-seeking state. All curves can also be interpreted as the corresponding expected cumulative count for 160 independent mosquitoes being released. The first situation (black) could be interpreted as host seeking on an unprotected host; the second (dark grey) as host seeking on a host protected by an intervention that repels mosquitoes; and the third situation (light grey) as host seeking on a host protected by an intervention that kills mosquitoes; the last two situations would be indistinguishable when only looking at the cumulative HLC counts after 12 h